Glass 




Book > 3 T - 



i ^4 



MORE WORLDS THAN ONE 

THE CREED OF THE PHILOSOPHER 
AND THE HOPE OF THE CHRISTIAN. 



SIR DAVID BREWSTER, K. H., D. C. L. 

r. R. S., V.P. K. S., EDIN., AND ASSOCIATE OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 



* Bright star of eve, that send'st thy softening ray 
Through the dim twilight of this nether sky, 
I hail thy heara like rising of the day, 
'■last thou a home for me when I shall die? 

' Is "here a spot -within thy radiant sphere, 
TThe.e love, and faith, and truth, again may dwell ; 
"Where I may seek the rest I find not here, 
And clasp the cherished forms I loved so well/"' 



N E W Y E K : 
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

No. 2 8 5 BROADWA Y. 

1854. 



{. 54 
1* 



a?. 



-A - v 



By Transfer 

D. C Public Libwy 



CONTENTS. 

Preface, 

Introduction, 

Chap. I. Religious Aspect of the Question, 
II. Description of the Solar System, 

III. The Geological Condition of the Earth, 

IV. Analogy between the Earth and the other 

Planets, ..... 
V. The Sun, Moon, Satellites, and Asteriods, 
VI. The Motion of the Solar System round a 
distant Centre, 
VII. Religious Difficulties, . 
VIII. Single Stars and Binary Systems, 
IX. Clusters of Stars and Nebulae, 
X. General Summary, 
XL Reply to Objections drawn from Geology, 
XII. Objections from the Nature of Nebula?, 

XIII. Objections from the Nature of the Fixed 

Stars and Binary Systems, . 

XIV. Objections from the Nature of the Planets 
XV. The Future of the Universe, 



1 

15 
26 
43 

61 
94 

116 
131 
162 
173 

184 
204 
215 

225 
239 
259 



PREFACE. 

Having been requested by the Editor of the 
North British Review to give an account of a work 
entitled Of a Plurality of Worlds, an Essay, I under- 
took the task, in the belief that it contained senti- 
ments similar to my own, and that I should have 
the gratification of illustrating and recommending a 
doctrine which had long been the creed of the Phi- 
losopher, and the hope of the Christian. I was sur- 
prised, however, to find that, under a title calculated 
to mislead the public, the author had made an elab- 
orate attack upon opinions consecrated, as I had 
thought, by Reason and Revelation; and had, in 
concluding his argument, not only adopted the Neb- 
ular Theory, so universally condemned as a danger- 
ous speculation, but had taken a view of the condi- 
tion of the Solar System, calculated to disparage the 
science of Astronomy, and to throw a doubt over 
the noblest of its truths. 



VI PREFACE* 

Under ordinary circumstances I should have con- 
tented myself with such an analysis and criticism 
of the work as could be given within the narrow 
limits of a Eeview ; but while the boldness of the 
author's speculations, and the ingenuity with which 
they were maintained, required a more elaborate 
examination of them, the new views which present- 
ed themselves to me during the study of the subject, 
demanded a copious detail of facts which could be 
given only in a separate Treatise. I have, therefore, 
devoted the principal part of the volume to a state- 
ment of the arguments in favor of a Plurality of 
Worlds, and have endeavored, in the subsequent 
chapters, to answer the various objections urged 
against it by the author of the Essay, and to exam- 
ine the grounds upon which he has attempted to es- 
tablish the extraordinary doctrine, " that the Earth 
is really the largest planetary body in the Solar 
System, — its domestic hearth, and the only world 
in the Universe !" 



St. Leonard's College, St. Andrews, 
April 25th, 1854. 



MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 



INTRODUCTION. 

There is no subject within the whole range 
of knowledge so universally interesting as that 
of a Plurality of Worlds. It commands the 
sympathies, and appeals to the judgment of men 
of all nations, of all creeds, and of all times ; and 
no sooner do we comprehend the few simple 
facts on which it rests, than the mind rushes 
instinctively to embrace it. Before the great 
truths of Astronomy were demonstrated— before 
the dimensions and motions of the planets were 
ascertained, and the fixed stars placed at incon- 
ceivable distances from the system to which we 
belong, philosophers and poets descried in the 
celestial spheres the abode of the blest ; but it 
was not till the form and size and motions of 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

the earth were known, and till the condition 
of the other planets was found to be the same, 
that analogy compelled us to believe that these 
planets must be inhabited like our own. 

Although this opinion was maintained inci- 
dentally by various writers both on astronomy 
and natural religion, yet M. Fontenelle, Secre- 
tary to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, was 
the first individual who wrote a work expressly 
on the subject. It was published in 1686, the 
year before Sir Isaac Newton gave his immor- 
tal work, the Principia, to the world. It was 
entitled Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, 
and consisted of five chapters with the follow- 
ing titles : 

1. The Earth is a planet which turns round 
its own axis and also round the sun. 

2. The Moon is a habitable world. 

3. Particulars concerning the world in the 
Moon, and that the other planets are also in- 
habited. 

4. Particulars of the worlds of Venus, Mer- 
cury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. 

5. The Fixed Stars are as many Suns, each 
of which illuminates a world. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

In another edition of the work published in 
1719, Fontenelle added a sixth chapter, entitled, 

6. New thoughts which confirm those in the 
preceding conversations. The latest discoveries 
which have been made in the heavens. 

This singular work, written by a man of great 
genius, and with a sufficient knowledge of as- 
tronomy, excited a high degree of interest, both 
from the nature of the subject and the vivacity 
and humor with which it is written. The con- 
versations are carried on with the Marchioness 

of G , with whom the author is supposed to 

be residing. The lady is, of course, distinguished 
by youth, beauty, and talent, and the share 
which she takes in the dialogue is not less in- 
teresting than the more scientific part assumed 
by the philosopher. 

The Plurality of Worlds, as the work was 
called, was read with unexampled avidity, and 
was speedily circulated through every part of 
Europe. It was translated into all the lan- 
guages of the Continent, and was honored by 
annotations from the pen of the celebrated as- 
tronomer La Lande, and of M. Gottsched, one of 
its German editors. No fewer than three English 



10 INTRODUCTION 

translations of it were published, and one of 
these, we believe the first, had run through six 
editions so early as the year 1737. Wherever 
it was read it was admired, and though one 
hundred and sixty-seven years have elapsed since 
its publication, we have not been able to learn 
that any attempt has been made, during that 
long period, either to ridicule or controvert the 
fascinating doctrines which it taught. 

A few years after the publication of Fonte- 
nelle's work, the celebrated philosopher Chris- 
tian Huy gens, the contemporary of Newton, and 
the discoverer of the ring and the satellites of Sat- 
urn, composed a work on the Plurality of Worlds, 
under the title of the Theory of the Universe, or 
Conjectures concerning the Celestial Bodies and 
their Inhabitants* This interesting treatise, as 
large as that of Fontenelle, has never been trans- 
lated into English. It was written at the age 
of sixty -seven, a short time before the author's 
death, and so great was the interest which he 
felt in its publication, that he earnestly besought 
his brother to carry his wishes into effect. He 

* Cosmotheoros sive de Terris Celestibus, earumque ornatu conjec- 
ture, ad Constantinum Hugenium Fratrem, Gulielmo iii. Magna? Britan- 
niee Regi a Secretis. Hugenii Opera, torn. ii. pp. 645-722. 



INTRODUCTION 11 

mentions tile great pleasure lie had derived from 
the composition of it, and from the communica- 
tion of his views to his friends. About to enter 
the world of the future, the philosopher who had 
added new planets to our system, and discovered 
the most magnificent and incomprehensible of 
its bodies, looked forward with interest to a 
solution of the mysteries which it had been the 
business and the happiness of his life to con- 
template. He was anxious that his fellow- men 
should derive the same pleasure from viewing 
the planets as the seat of intellectual life, and 
he left them his Theory of the Universe — a 
legacy worthy of his name. 

The Cosmoiheoros is a work essentially differ- 
ent from that of Fontenelle. It is didactic and 
dispassionate, deducing by analogical reasoning 
a variety of views respecting the plants and 
animals in the planets, and the general nature 
and condition of their inhabitants. The work 
is to some extent a popular Treatise on Astron- 
omy, and contains all that was at that time 
known respecting the primary and secondary 
planets of the solar system. 

We are not acquainted with any other work 



12 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

written expressly on the subject of a Plurality 
of Worlds, but tlie doctrine was maintained by 
almost all the distinguished astronomers and 
writers who have flourished since the true figure 
of the earth was determined. Giordano Bruno 
of Nola,* Kepler and Tycho believed in it ; and 
Cardinal Cusa and Bruno, before the discovery 
of binary systems among the stars, believed also 
that the stars were inhabited. In more modern 
times Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity College, 
Cambridge, in his eighth sermon on the Confu- 
tation of Atheism from the origin and frame of 
the world, f has maintained the same doctrine, 
and in our own day we may number among its 
supporters the distinguished names of Sir Wil- 
liam and Sir John Herschel, Dr. Chalmers, 
Isaac Taylor, and M. Arago. 

Under these circumstances the scientific world 
has been greatly surprised at the appearance of 
a work entitled Of the Plurality of Worlds, the 
object of which is to prove that our earth is the 
only inhabited world in the universe, while its 
direct tendency is to ridicule and bring into 

* In his work entitled Universo e Mondi innumerabUi. 
t This sermon was written from the information given him by Sir Isaac 
Newton in his four celebrated letters addressed to Dr. Bentley. 



INTRODUCTION. 18 

contempt the grand discoveries in sidereal astron- 
omy by which, the last century has been dis- 
tinguished. Although it is not probable that a 
work of this kind, however ably it is written, 
and however ingenious may be the reasoning by 
which views so novel and extraordinary are 
defended, will influence opinions long and 
deeply cherished, we have thought it necessary, 
in defence of astronomical truth, as well as of 
the lessons which it teaches, to defend the doc- 
trine of a Plurality of Worlds by the aid of 
modern discoveries, and to analyze and refute 
the objections which have been made to it in 
the very remarkable work to which we have 
referred. 



CHAPTER I. 

RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 

Before Christianity shed its light upon the 
world, the philosopher who had no other guide 
but reason, looked beyond the grave for a rest- 
ing-place from his labors, as well as for a solu- 
tion of the mysteries which perplexed him. 
Minds, too, of an inferior order, destined for 
immortality, and conscious of their destination, 
instinctively pried into the future, cherishing 
visions of another world with all the interests 
of domestic affection, and with all the curiosity 
which the study of nature inspires. Interesting 
as has been the past history of our race, — en- 
grossing as must ever be the present, — ■ the 
future, more exciting still, mingles itself with 
every thought and sentiment, and casts its 
beams of hope, or its shadows of fear, over the 
stage both of active and contemplative life. In 



16 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE 

youth, we scarcely descry it in the distance. To 
the stripling and the man it appears and. dis- 
appears like a variable star, showing in painful 
succession its spots of light and of shade. In 
age it looms gigantic to the eye, full of chas- 
tened hope and glorious anticipation ; and at 
the great transition when the outward eye is 
dim, the image of the future is the last picture 
which is effaced from the retina of the mind. 

But however universal has been the antici- 
pation of the future, and however powerful its 
influence over the mind, Eeason did not venture 
to give a form and locality to its conceptions ; and 
the imagination, even with its loosest reins, failed 
in the attempt. Before the birth of Astronomy, 
indeed, when our knowledge of space terminat- 
ed with the ocean or the mountain range that 
bounded our view, the philosopher could but 
place his elysium in the sky ; and even when 
revelation had unveiled the house of many man- 
sions, the Christian sage could but place his 
future home in the new heavens and in the new 
earth of his creed. Thus vaguely shadowed 
forth, thus seen as through a glass darkly, the 
future even of the Christian, though a reality 



EELiaiOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 17 

to his faith, was but a dream to his reason ; 
and in vain did he inquire what this future was 
to be in its physical relations,- — in what region 
of space it was to be spent, — what duties and 
pursuits were to occupy it, — and what intellec- 
tual and spiritual gifts were to be its portion. 
But when Science taught us the past history of 
our earth, its form, and size, and motions, — when 
Astronomy surveyed the solar system, and meas- 
ured its planets, and pronounced the earth to 
be but a tiny sphere, and to have no place of 
distinction among its gigantic compeers, — and 
when the Telescope established new systems of 
worlds far beyond tlje boundaries of our own, 
the future of the sage claimed a place through- 
out the universe, and inspired him with an 
interest in worlds, and systems of worlds, — in 
life without limits, as well as in life without 
end. On eagles' wings he soared to the zenith, 
and sped his way to the horizon of space, with- 
out reaching its ever-retiring bourne ; and in 
the infinity of worlds, and amid the infinity of 
life, he descried the homo and the companions 
of the future. 

That these views are in accordance with the 
2**"" 



18 MORE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

demonstrated truths of astronomy, and deduci- 
ble from them by analogies which guide us in 
the ordinary business of life, it will be the ob- 
ject of this Essay to show. But before entering 
upon the astronomical and geological details 
which will thus demand our attention, some 
preliminary observations are necessary to pre- 
pare our minds for the unfettered discussion of 
a subject which is still surrounded with many 
prejudices. 

In advocating a plurality of worlds, we are 
fortunately in a more favored position than 
the geologist, whose researches into the ancient 
history of the earth stood in apparent opposi- 
tion to the declarations of Scripture. Neither 
in the Old nor in the New Testament is there 
a single expression incompatible with the great 
truth, that there are other worlds than our own 
which are the seats of life and intelligence. 
Many passages of Scripture, on the contrary, 
are favorable to the doctrine, and there are 
some, we think, which are inexplicable, without 
admitting it to be true. The beautiful text,* 

* When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and 
the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, that thou art mindful 
of him ? and the sun of man, that thou visitest him.— Psalm viii. 3, 4. 



KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 19 

for example, in which the inspired Psalmist 
expresses his surprise that the Being who fash- 
ioned the heavens, and ordained the moon 
and the stars, should be mindful of so insignif- 
icant a being as man, is, we think, a positive 
argument for a plurality of worlds. We cannot 
concur in the idea of Dr. Chalmers, that a per- 
son wholly ignorant of the science of astronomy, 
and, consequently, to whom all the stars and 
planets are but specks of light in the sky, not 
more important than the ignis fatuus upon a 
marshy field, could express the surprise and 
deep emotion of the Hebrew poet. We cannot 
doubt that inspiration revealed to him the mag- 
nitude, the distances, and the final cause of the 
glorious spheres which fixed his admiration. 
Two portions of creation are here placed in the 
strongest contrast, — Man in his comparative in- 
significance, and the Heavens, — the Moon and 
the Stars in their absolute grandeur. He whom 
Grod made a little lower than the angels, whom 
He crowned with glory and with honor, and 
for whose redemption He sent His only Son to 
suffer and to die, could not, in the Psalmist's 
estimation, be an object of insignificance, and 



20 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

measured, therefore, by his high estimate of man, 
his idea of the heavens, the moon, and the stars 
must have been of the most transcendent kind. 
Had he been ignorant of astronomy, he never 
could have given utterance to the sentiment in 
the text. Man, made after God's image, was a 
nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the 
sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp 
of the moon. The Psalmist must, therefore, 
have written under the impression either that 
the planets and stars were worlds without life, 
or worlds inhabited by rational and immortal 
beings. If he regarded them as unoccupied, we 
cannot see any reason for surprise that God 
should be mindful of His noblest work, because 
innumerable masses of matter existed in the 
universe, performing, for no intelligible purpose, 
their solitary rounds. If they were thus made 
for the benefit and contemplation of man, un- 
seen by any mortal eye but his, then should the 
Psalmist have expressed his wonder, not at the 
littleness, but at the greatness of the being for 
whose use such magnificent worlds had been 
called into existence. But- if the poet viewed 
these worlds, as he doubtless did, as teeming 



KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 21 

with life, physical and intellectual, as globes 
which, may have required millions of years for 
their preparation, exhibiting new forms of be- 
ing, new powers of mind, new conditions in 
the past, and new glorious in the future, we 
can then understand why he marvelled at the 
care of God for creatures so comparatively in- 
significant as man. 

It is evident, from the text we have been 
considering, and from other passages of Scrip- 
ture, that the word Heavens, so distinctly sepa- 
rated from the moon and the stars, represents 
a material creation, the work of God's fingers, 
and not a celestial place in which spiritual 
beings may be supposed to dwell ; and we are 
therefore entitled to attach the same meaning 
to the term wherever it occurs, unless the con- 
text forbids such an application of it. The 
writers, both in the Old and New Testament, 
speak of the heavens as a separate material 
creation from the earth, and there are passages 
which seem very clearly to indicate that they 
are the seat of life. When St. Paul tells us 
that the worlds were framed by the word of 
God, and that by our Saviour, the heir of all 



22 MOEE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

things, He made the worlds, we are not entitled 
to suppose that lie means globes of matter, re- 
volving without inhabitants, or without any 
preparation for receiving them. He can only 
mean worlds like our own, that declare to their 
living occupants the glory of their Maker. 
When Isaiah speaks of the heavens being spread 
out as a tent to dwell in* when Job tells us 
that God, who spread out the heavens, made 
Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the cham- 
bers of the south ; f and when Amos speaks of 
Him who buildeth his stories in the heavens,^ 
(His house of many mansions,) they use terms 
which clearly indicate that the celestial spheres 
are the seat of life. In the book of Genesis, 
too, God is said to have finished the heavens 
and the earth, and all the host ofthem.% Nehe- 
miah declares that God made the heaven, the 
heaven of heavens, and all their host, the earth 
and all things that are therein, and that the 
host of heaven worship Him.\ The Psalmist 
speaks of all the host of the heavens as made by 
the breath of God's mouth,% (the process by 

* Isaiah xlv. 22. f Job ix. 8, 9. % Amos ix. 6. 

§ Gen. ii. 1. \ Neh. ix. 6. *f Psalm xxxiii. 6. 



RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 23 

which He gave life to Adam ;) and Isaiah fur- 
nishes ns with a striking passage, in which the 
occupants of the earth and of the heavens are 
separately described. U I have made the earth, 
and created man upon it : I, even my hands, 
have stretched out the heavens, and all their 
host have I commanded."* But in addition to 
these obvious references to life and things per- 
taining to life, we find in Isaiah the following 
remarkable passage, " For thus saith the Lord 
that created the heavens, God himself that 
formed the earth and made it ; he hath estab- 
lished it, he created it not in vain, he formed 
it to be inhabited. "f Here we have a distinct 
declaration from the inspired prophet, that the 
earth would have been created IN VAIN if it had 
not been formed to be inhabited ; and hence we 
draw the conclusion, that as the Creator cannot 
be supposed to have made the worlds of our 
system, and those in the sidereal universe in 
vain, they must have been formed to be inhab- 
ited. 

These views, as deduced from Scripture, re- 
ceive much support from considerations of a 

* Isaiah xlv. 12. f Isaiah xlv. 18. 



24 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

very different nature. Man in his future state 
of existence is to consist, as at present, of a 
spiritual nature residing in a corporeal frame. 
He must live therefore upon a material planet, 
subject to all the laws of matter, and perform- 
ing functions for which a material body is in- 
dispensable. We must therefore find, for the 
race of Adam, if not for races that preceded 
him, a material home upon which he may- 
reside, or from which he may travel by means 
unknown to us, to other localities in the uni- 
verse. That home, we think, cannot be the 
new earth upon which we dwell, though it may 
be the new heavens wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness. At the present hour the population of 
the earth is nearly a thousand millions ; and by 
whatever process we may compute the numbers 
that have existed before the present generation, 
and estimate those that are yet to inherit the 
earth, we shall obtain a population which the 
habitable parts of our globe could not possibly 
accommodate. If there is not room then on 
our globe for the millions of millions of being 
who have lived and died upon its surface, and 
who may yet live and die during the period 



BELIGI0US ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 25 

fixed for its occupation by man, we can scarcely 
doubt that their future abode must be on some 
of the primary or secondary planets of the Solar 
system, whose inhabitants have ceased to exist 
like those on the earth, or upon planets which 
have long been in a state of preparation, as our 
earth was, for the advent of intellectual life. 

The connection thus indicated between the 
destinies of the human family and the material 
system to which we belong, arising from the 
limited extent of the earth's habitable surface, 
and its unlimited population, is a strong corrob- 
oration of the views which we have deduced 
from Scripture. In the world of instinct the 
superabundance of life is controlled by the law 
of mutual destruction, which reigns in the earth, 
the ocean, and the air ; but the swarm of hu- 
man life, increasing in an incalculable ratio, 
both in the Old and the New World, has not 
been perceptibly reduced by the scythe of fam- 
ine, of pestilence, or of war; and when we 
consider the length of time during which this 
accumulation may proceed, we cannot justly 
challenge the correctness of the conclusion that 
this earth is not to be the future residence 
3 



26 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

of the numerous family which, it has reared. 
The connection between this probable truth and 
the doctrine of a plurality of worlds, will ap- 
pear from the facts and reasonings in the fol- 
lowing chapter. 



CHAPTER II. 

DESCRIPTION" OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 

In order to appreciate the force of the argu- 
ment for a plurality of worlds, derived from the 
similarity of our earth to the other planets of 
the Solar system, we must call the attention of 
the reader to a popular description of the mag- 
nitudes, distances, and general phenomena of 
the different bodies that compose it. 

In making this survey, the first and the 
grandest object which arrests our attention is 
the glorious Sun, — the centre and soul of our\ 
system, — the lamp that lights it, the fire that 
heats it, — the magnet that guides and controls I 
it, — the fountain of color which gives its azure 
to the sky, its verdure to the fields, its rainbow 
hues to the gay world of flowers, and the " pur- 
ple light of love " to the marble cheek of youth J 
and beauty. This globe, probably of burning 



28 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

gas, enveloping a solid nucleus, is nearly 900,000 
miles in diameter, above a hundred times the 
diameter of our globe, and five hundred times 
larger in bulk than all the planets put together ! 
It revolves upon its axis in twenty-five days, 
and throws off its light with the velocity of 
192,000 miles in a second. Sometimes by 
the naked eye, but frequently even by small 
telescopes, large black spots, many thousand 
miles in diameter, are seen upon its surface, 
and are evidently openings in the luminous 
atmosphere, through which we see the opaque 
solid nucleus, or the real body of the sun. 

Around, and nearest the sun, at a distance 
of thirty-six millions of miles, revolves the 
planet Mercury, with a day of twenty -four 
hours, and a year of eighty-eight days ; and he 
receives from the sun nearly seven times as 
much light and heat as the earth. Through 
the telescope some astronomers have observed 
spots on its surface, and mountains several miles 
in height. 

Next to Mercury the planet Venus revolves 
at the distance of sixty-eight millions of miles, 
with a day of nearly twenty -four hours, and a 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 29 

year of 224 days. Her diameter is 7,700 miles, 
a' little less than that of the earth. She changes 
her phases like the moon, exhibits spots on her 
surface, and, according to Schroeter, has moun- 
tains nearly twenty miles in height. The light 
and heat which she receives from the sun is 
about double of that which is received by the 
earth.* 

The next body of the Solar system is our own 
Earth — our birthplace, and soon to be our 
grave. Its distance from the sun is ninety-six 
millions of miles ; its diameter nearly 8,000 ; its 
year 365 days, and its day twenty-four hours. 
The form of the Earth is that of an oblate 
spheroid, or of a sphere flattened at the poles 
like an orange. Its superficies is divided into 
continents and seas, the continents occupying 
one-third, and the seas two-thirds of its whole 
surface. The land, sometimes level and some- 
times undulating, occasionally rises into groups 
and ranges of mountains, the highest of which 

* From the rare appearance and want of permanence in the spots of 
Mercury and Venus, Sir John Herschel is of opinion " that we do not see 
as in the moon the real surface of these planets, but only their atmos- 
phere, much loaded with clouds, and which may serve to mitigate the 
otherwise intense glare of their sunshine."— Outlines of Astronomy, § 509. 

3* 



30 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

does not exceed five miles. The Earth, is sur- 
rounded with an aerial envelope or atmosphere, 
which is computed to be about forty -five miles 
in height, though the region of clouds does not 
reach much above the summits of the highest 
mountains. 

The Earth is accompanied by a Moon or 
satellite, whose distance is 237,000 miles, and 
diameter 2,160. Her surface is composed of 
hill and dale, of rocks and mountains nearly 
two miles high, and of circular cavities, some- 
times five miles in depth, and forty in diameter, 
which are believed to be the remains of extinct 
volcanoes. She possesses neither lakes nor seas ; 
and we cannot discover with the telescope any 
traces of living beings, or any monuments of 
their hands, though we hope it will be done 
with some magnificent telescope which may 
yet be constructed. Viewing the Earth as the 
third planet in order from the sun, can we doubt 
that it is a globe like the rest, poised in ether 
like them, and, like them, moving round the 
central luminary? 

Next, beyond the Earth, is the red-colored 
planet Mars, with a day of about twenty-five 
hours, and revolving round the sun in 687 days. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAE SYSTEM. 31 

at the distance of one hundred and forty-two 
millions of miles. His diameter is 4,100 miles, 
and his surface exhibits spots of different hues, 
— the seas, according to Sir John Herschel, 
being green, and the land red. The spots which 
have been seen on this planet by several astron- 
omers, are not always equally distinct, but 
when seen " they offer," as Sir John Herschel 
observes, " the appearance of forms, considerably 
definite and highly characteristic, brought suc- 
cessively into view by the rotation of the planet, 
from the assiduous observation of which it has 
even been found practicable to construct a rude 
chart of the surface of the planet. The variety 
in the spots may arise from the planet not being 
destitute of atmosphere and cloud ; and what 
adds greatly to the probability of this, is the 
appearance of brilliant white spots at its poles, 
which have been conjectured, with some proba- 
bility, to be snow, as they disappear when they 
have been long exposed to the sun, and are 
greatest when just emerging from the long night 
of their polar winter, the snow line then ex- 
tending to about six degrees from the pole."* 

* Outlines of Astronomy, § 510. 



32 MOKE WOELDS THAIST OKE. 

Hitherto we have been surveying worlds at a 
respectful distance from each other, and having 
days, and nights, and seasons r . and aspects, of 
the same character ; but we now arrive at a 
region in space where some great catastrophe 
has doubtless taken place. At the distance of 
about two hundred and fifty millions of miles 
from the sun, corresponding to a period of about 
1,500 days, astronomers long ago predictedthe 
existence of a large planet, occupying the space 
between Mars and Jupiter. In the beginning 
of the present century, one very small planet 
was discovered in this locality by M. Piazzi ; 
and after other two had been discovered, one 
by himself, Dr. Olbers hazarded the opinion 
that the three planets were fragments of a 
larger one which had burst ; and this remark- 
able theory has been almost placed beyond a 
doubt by the discovery, in the same place, of 
twenty-nine fragments in all, chiefly by M. 
Gasparis of Naples, and our own countryman, 
Mr. Hind. 

Beyond this remarkable group is situated the 
planet Jupitee, a world of huge magnitude, 
revolving round its axis in ten hours, and round 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 33 

the sun in 4,333 days, (a little less than twelve 
years,) at the distance of four hundred and 
eighty-five millions of miles. His form is that 
of an oblate spheroid, his equatorial being to his 
polar diameter as 107 to 100. His diameter is 
90,000 miles, and he is attended by four satel- 
lites, the average size of which is a little greater 
than that of our moon. His surface exhibits 
bright spots and. dark bands or belts, which, 
though they have always the same direction, 
vary in breadth and in position, occasionally 
running into branches and dark spots. Sir 
John Herschel is of opinion, that the belts are 
tracts of corresponding clear sky in the planet's 
atmosphere, through which the darker body of 
the planet is seen, and that they are produced 
by currents like our trade-winds, but having a 
more steady and decided character. 

Next to Jupiter is the remarkable planet 
Saturn, accompanied with eight satellites, and 
surrounded by a nny, separated from his body 
by an interval of 19,000 miles. The distance 
of Saturn from the sun is eight hundred and 
ninety millions of miles, his annual period 
twenty-nine and a half years, and the length of 



84 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

his day ten and a half hours. His diameter is 
76,000 miles, and the outer diameter of his 
ring 176,000. According to very recent obser- 
vations, the ring is divided into three separate 
rings, which, according to the calculations of 
Mr. Bond, an American astronomer, must be 
fluid. He is of opinion that the number of 
rings is continually changing, and that their 
maximum number, in the normal condition of 
the mass, does not exceed tvjenty. According 
to Mr. Bond, the power which sustains the 
centre of gravity of the ring is not in the 
planet itself, but in his satellites ; and the 
satellites, though constantly disturbing the 
ring, actually sustain it in the very act of per- 
turbation. 

Mr. Otto Struve and Mr. Bond have lately 
studied, with the great Munich telescope, at the 
observatory of Pulkowa, the third ring of Sat- 
urn, which Mr. Lassels and Mr. Bond discov- 
ered to be fluid. They saw distinctly the dark 
interval between this fluid ring and the two old 
ones, and even measured its dimensions ; and 
they perceived at its inner margin an edge feebly 
illuminated, which they thought might be the 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 35 

commencement of a fourth ring. These astron- 
omers are of opinion, that the fluid ring is not 
of very recent formation, and that it is not sub- 
ject to rapid change ; and they have come to 
the extraordinary conclusion, that the inner 
border of the ring has, since the time of Huy- 
gens, been gradually approaching to the body 
of Saturn, and that we may expect sooner or 
later, perhaps in some dozen of years, to see the 
rings united with the body of the planet 

Beyond Saturn, at a distance from the sun 
of one thousand eight hundred millions of miles, 
is placed the planet Uranus, discovered by Dr. 
Herschel. Its year, or annual period, is eighty- 
four years, and the length of its day nine and 
a half hours. Its diameter is 34,500 miles, 
and it is attended by eight satellites, six of 
which were discovered by Dr. Herschel, and 
the other two, a few years ago, by Mr. Lassels 
of Liverpool. 

The remotest planet of our system, the planet 
Neptune, discovered theoretically in 1846 by 
Adams and Leverrier, and first recognized in 
the heavens by M. Galle of Berlin, is about 
42,000 miles in diameter, and performs its an- 



36 MOEE WOELDS THAN ONE, 

nual revolution in 63,000 days, (about 145 years,) 
at the distance of nearly three thousand millions 
of miles from the sun. It is accompanied with 
one, and probably two, satellites ; and there is 
reason to believe that it is surrounded with a 
ring like Saturn. 

Having thus travelled from the centre to the 
verge of the planetary system, — from the efful- 
gent orb of day to that almost Cimmerian twi- 
light where Phoebus could scarcely see to guide 
his steeds, let us ponder awhile over the star- 
tling yet instructive sights which we have en- 
countered in our course. Adjoining the sun, 
we find Mercury and Venus, with days and 
seasons like ours. Upon reaching our own 
planet, we recognize in it the same general fea- 
tures, but be find it larger in magnitude, and 
possessing the additional distinction of a satel- 
lite and a race of living beings to rejoice in the 
pre-eminence. In contrast with Mars, our earth 
still maintains its superiority both in size and 
equipments; but, upon advancing a little far- 
ther into space, our pride is rebuked and our 
fears evoked, when we reach the part of our 
system where twenty-nine asteroids, relics of a 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 87 

once mighty planet, (or the uncombined portions 
of what might have been a planet,) are revolv- 
ing in dissevered orbits, and warning the vain 
astronomer of another world that a similar fate 
may await his own. Dejected, but not despair- 
ing, we pass onward, and, as if in bright con- 
trast with the confusion and desolation we have 
witnessed, there bursts upon our sight the splen- 
did orb of Jupiter, proudly enthroned amid his 
attendant satellites. When compared with so 
glorious a creation, our own earth dwindles into 
insignificance. It is no longer the monarch of 
the planetary throng, and we blush at the rec- 
ollection that sovereigns and pontiffs, and even 
philosophers, made it the central ball, around 
which the Sun and Moon and planets, and even 
the stars, revolved in obsequious subjection. 
The dignity of being the seat of intellectual and 
animal life, however, still seems to be our own ; 
and if our globe does not swell so largely to the 
eye, or shine so brightly in the night, it has yet 
been the seat of glorious dynasties,— of mighty 
empires, — of heroes that have bled for their 
country, — of martyrs who have died for their 
faith, — and of sages who have unravelled the 
4 



38 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

very universe we are surveying. Pursuing oui 
outward course, a new wonder is presented to 
us in the gorgeous appendages of Saturn, en- 
circled with a brilliant ring, and with eight 
moons, for the use, doubtless, of living beings. 
Advancing onwards, we encounter Uranus, with 
his eight pledges that he is the seat of life ; and 
after passing the new planet Neptune, at the 
frontier of our system, we reach what is the 
region, and what may be regarded as the home, 
of comets. 

Comets, or wandering stars, as they have 
been called, are those celestial bodies most of 
which appear occasionally only within the limits 
of the Solar system. They move in elliptical 
orbits, in one of the foci of which the sun is 
placed ; but, unlike the planets, which always 
move from west to east, the comets revolve in 
orbits inclined at all possible angles, and move 
in all possible directions. The movements of 
the six or seven hundred comets which have 
been observed, must be chiefly executed within 
that vast and untenanted region, which lies be- 
tween the nearest known fixed star and the orbit 
of Neptune, an interval equal to six thousand 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 89 

times the distance of that planet from the sun, 
or twenty -one million million of miles. What 
is their occupation there, or what it is here, 
when they are our visitors, we cannot venture to 
guess. That they do not perform the functions 
of planets is obvious, from their very nature ; 
and there is no appearance of their importing 
anything useful into our system, or of their ex- 
porting anything to another. Judging from 
the immense portion of their orbits which lies 
beyond Neptune, it has been imagined that 
the central body of some other system is placed 
in the distant focus of each of their orbits, and 
that in this way all the different systems in the 
universe are, as it were, united into one by the 
intercommunication of comets. Some comets 
have passed near the earth, and others may pass 
still nearer it ; but even if they should not pro- 
duce those tremendous effects which Laplace has 
indicated, and if their great rarity and rapid 
motion should hinder them from acting upon 
our seas, or changing the axis of our globe, a 
sweep of their train of gas or of vapor would 
not be a pleasing salutation to living beings. 
The greatest distance of the most distant comet 



40 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

that has been observed, falls short of the distance 
of the nearest fixed star by nine million million 
of miles. Placing ourselves at this distance, 
how ridiculous appears the idea, so long and 
devoutly cherished, that the heavens, with all 
their host, revolved round our little planet ! At 
that point the earth is not even visible, and the 
whole starry creation, and our sun itself dwin- 
dled into a star, stand fixed and immovable. 

Till within the last forty years it was the 
universal belief among astronomers that every 
comet strayed far beyond the limits of the Solar 
system, the shortest period of any of those that 
had been observed being about seventy years, 
indicating the immense distance which it must 
have traversed beyond the orbit of Neptune. In 
1818, however, M.Pons discovered a comet, now 
called Encke's Comet, whose period was not 
above three years and five months, and whose 
orbit, extending inwards as far as that of Mer- 
cury, did not reach beyond the orbit of Pallas. 
Other five comets, whose periods are 5£, 5|, 6 J, 
7|-, and 16 years, have been discovered within 
the limits of our system. Among these bodies, 
the comet of Biela, discovered in 1826, appeared 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 41 

to separate into two distinct comets with parallel 
tails, which, after a certain time resumed its 
single state. M. Damoiseau having predicted that 
this comet would pass within 18,000 miles of a 
point in the earth's orbit, the publication of this 
fact excited such an alarm in Paris, that M. 
Arago was summoned from his studies to allay 
the terror of the community. The fears of the 
people, however, will not appear unreasonable, 
when we recollect that Sir John Herschel has 
stated that the orbit of this comet " so nearly 
intersects that of the earth, that an actual colli- 
sion is not impossible, and indeed must in all 
likelihood happen in the lapse of some millions 
of years!" 

A seventh comet belonging to our system, 
called LexeWs Comet, which that astronomer 
discovered in 1770, is supposed to have been 
lost, as it ought to have appeared thirteen times, 
and has not been seen since that date. It 
is supposed to have been rendered invisible in 
1779 by the action of Jupiter, but in what 
way astronomers have not been able to de- 
termine. 

The following popular view of the sizes and 
4* 



42 



MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 



distances of the planets which compose the Solar 
system lias been given by Sir John Herschel : 



Size. 



The Sun, - 
Mercury, 
Venus, 
Earth, 



Juno, 

Ceres, 

Vesta, 

Pallas and 

the other 25 

Asteroids, 

Jupiter, 

Saturn, 

Uranus, 

Neptune, 



Diameter of 
orbit in feet. 

a Globe two feet in diameter, 

a Mustard Seed, - - 164 

a Pea, 284 

a larger Pea, - 430 

a large pin's head, - - 654 



Grains of Sand, 



an Orange, 
a Small Orange 
a Cherry, 
a Plum, 



1000 

to 

1200 

Half a mile. 
One mile and a fifth. 
A mile and a half. 
Two miles and a half. 



To which, we may add, 

The greatest distance of a Comet, Eight thousand miles. 
Distance of nearest Fixed Star, Fifteen thousand miles. 



+ 

CHAPTBE in. 

THE GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 

In the preceding brief description of the 
Solar system, we see distinctly the relation 
which, our own Earth bears to the other planets, 
in its position, its form, its magnitude, its satel- 
lite, and its daily and annual motions. But 
though a comparison of these properties of the 
earth, which constitute what may be called its 
astronomical condition, with the analogous prop- 
erties of the other planets, might entitle us to 
ascribe to them other functions, — the function, 
for example, of supporting inhabitants, which 
the earth only is known to possess, yet our ar- 
gument will derive new strength, and we shall 
be prepared to meet recent objections, by tak- 
ing into consideration the geological structure of 
the earth, and the properties of its atmosphere, 
and by endeavoring to read its past history in 



44 M0BE WORLDS THAN" ONE. 

the successive steps by which it has been pre- 
pared as a residence for the human family. 

The earth, as we have seen, when merely ex- 
amined by the eye, consists of land and water. 
The land is composed of soils of various kinds, 
and of stones and rocks of different characters. 
It is formed into extensive plains, into valleys 
excavated apparently by rivers or water-courses, 
and into mountain groups and mountain ranges, 
rising to the height of several miles above the 
bed of the ocean. In order to obtain a knowl- 
edge of the structure of the earth, geologists 
have examined with the greatest care its soils 
and its rocks, wherever they have been laid 
bare by natural or artificial causes, by the oper- 
ation of the miner, or the road engineer, or by 
the action of rivers or of the sea ; and they have 
thus obtained certain general results which 
give us an approximate idea of the different 
materials which compose what is called the 
crust of the earth. In those portions of its sur- 
face which do not rise into mountains, the 
thickness of the crust thus explored does not 
exceed ten miles, which is only the 800th part 
of the earth's diameter,— a quantity so small, 



GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EAETH. 45 

that if we represented the earth by a sphere hav- 
ing the same diameter as the cupola of St. 
Paul's, which is 140 feet, the thickness of the 
crust would be only about two inches. 

Beneath the crust lies the Nucleus of the 
earth, or its kernel or its skeleton frame, of the 
nature and composition of which we are entirely 
ignorant. We know only, by comparing the 
average density of the earth, which is about 5J 
times that of water, with the average density of 
the rocks near its surface, which is about Up- 
times that of water, that the density of the 
nucleus, if of uniform solidity, must exceed 5J, 
and must be much greater if it is hollow or 
contains large cavities. Geology does not pre- 
tend to give us any information respecting the 
process by which the nucleus of the earth was 
formed. Some speculative astronomers indeed 
have presumptuously embarked in such an in- 
quiry ; but there is not a trace of evidence that 
the solid nucleus of the globe was formed by 
secondary causes, such as the aggregation of 
attenuated matter diffused through space ; and 
the nebular theory, as it has been called, though 
maintained by a few distinguished names, has, 



46 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

we think, been overturned by arguments that 
have never been answered. Sir Isaac Newton, 
in his four celebrated letters to Dr. Bentley, 
has demonstrated that the planets of the solar 
system could not have been thus formed, and 
put in motion round a central sun. 

But though geologists have not been able to 
give us any intelligence respecting the earth's 
nucleus, they have examined the rocks which 
rest upon it, or the lowest of the series which 
extend upwards to the surface of the earth. 

I. The lowest of these rocks are granite, 
granitic rocks, trap, and porphyry. They are 
composed chiefly of the simple minerals, Quartz, 
Feldspar, Mica, and Hornblende. They are 
consequently crystalline and unstratified, and 
are believed to be of igneous origin. 

The next series of rocks are what are called 
the Metamorphic or altered rocks. They consist 
of gneiss, mica slate, and clay slate, and are 
more or less stratified. 

The next series of rocks is Basalt, or ancient 
lava, and what are called Trachytic Eocks. 

To these rocks the name of Primary has 



GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 47 

been given, and also the appellation of Azoic, 
because they contain no traces of plants or ani- 
mals, and are therefore without life, 01 destitute 
of organic remains. 

Above these formations lie the Secondary 
and the Tertiary formations. 

II. The Secondary formations have been 
divided by Professor Ansted into three periods, 
the Older, the Middle, and the Newer Sec- 
ondary. 

1. The Older Secondary formation he again 
divides into the Older Palaeozoic period, 
namely, 1. The Lower Silurian rocks, 
to which the name of Protozoic has been 
given, because they contain the first 
traces of life; and, 2. The Upper Si- 
lurian rocks, the Middle Palceozoic pe- 
riod, containing the Devonian or Old 
Eed Sandstone formation ; and 
The Newer Palaeozoic period, including, 

1. The Carboniferous formation ; and, 

2. The Magnesian Limestone, or Per- 
mian formation, and above these strata 
lie— 



48 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE, 

The Upper New Red Sandstone or Triassic 
formation, the last member of the older 
secondary period. 

2. The Middle secondary formation, con- 
sists of the" Lias, Oolite, and Wealden 
formations ; and, 

3. The Neiver secondary period consists of 
the Cretaceous or chalk formation. 

III. The Tertiary formation consists, reckon- 
ing from below, of, — 

1. The older tertiary, or Eocene, viz., Bag- 
shot sand and London clay. 

2. The middle tertiary, or Miocene, viz., Eed 
and Coralline Eag. 

3. The newer tertiary, or Pliocene, viz., the 
Till of Clyde and Norwich Crag. 

4. The superficial deposits, or Pleistocene, 
viz., all diluvial and alluvial deposits of 
gravel and other materials, sometimes 
stratified. 

The proportional thicknesses of these different 
formations have been estimated by Professor 



GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 49 

Phillips as follows, but the numbers can be 
regarded only as a very rude estimate : — ■ 



Tertiary formation, . 


2,000 feet 


Cretaceous, 


1,100 " 


Oolite and Lias, . 


2,500 " 


New Red Sandstone, . 


2,000 " 


Carboniferous, . 


. 10,000 " 


Old Red Sandstone, . 


9,000 " 


Primitive Roeks, 


. 20,000 " 



Thickness of the Earth's crust, 46,600=9 miles nearly. 

As all the stratified formations which compose 
the crust of the earth have obviously been de- 
posited in succession, geologists have endeavor- 
ed to form some notion of the time occupied in 
their deposition, or the age of the most ancient 
of them. By studying the fossil remains found 
in the different formations, geologists have 
placed it beyond a doubt, that great changes 
have taken place during the formation of the 
crust of the earth. The plants and animals 
which existed in one period are not found in 
another, — new species were at different times 
created, — and frequent convulsions have taken 
place, upheaving the beds of the ocean into 
continents and mountain ranges, and covering 
the dry land with the waters which were dis- 
5 



50 MOKE WOBLDS THAN ONE. 

placed. That the deposition of strata of such 
thickness, and operations of such magnitude, 
required a long period of time for their accom- 
plishment, has been willingly conceded to the 
geologist ; but this concession has been found- 
ed on the adoption of a unit of measure which 
may or may not be correct. It is taken for 
granted, that many of the stratified rocks were 
deposited in the sea by the same slow processes 
which are going on in the present day ; and as 
the thickness of the deposits now produced is 
a very small quantity during a long period of 
time, it is inferred that nine or ten miles of strata 
must have taken millions of years for their for- 
mation. 

We are not disposed to grudge the geologist 
even periods so marvellous as this, provided 
they are considered as merely hypothetical; 
but when we find, as we shall presently do, 
that speculative writers employ these assumed 
periods as positive truths, for establishing other 
theories which we consider erroneous, and even 
dangerous, we are compelled to examine more 
minutely a chronology which has been thus 
misapplied. 



GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 51 

Although we may admit that our seas and 
continents have nearly the same locality, and 
cover nearly the same area as they did at the 
creation of Adam ; and that the hills have not 
since that time changed their form or their 
height ; nor the beds of the ocean become deeper 
or shallower from the diurnal changes going on 
around us, — yet this does not authorize us to 
conclude that the world was prepared for man 
by similar causes operating in a similar manner. 
The same physical causes may operate quickly 
or slowly. The dew may fall invisibly on the 
ground, — the gentle shower may descend noise- 
less on the grass, — or the watery vapor may rush 
down in showers and torrents of rain, destroy- 
ing animal and vegetable life. The frozen mois- 
ture may fall in atoms of crystal, which are felt 
only by the tender skin upon which they light ; 
or it may come down in flakes of snow, forming 
beds many feet in thickness ; or it may be preci- 
pitated in destructive hailstones, or in masses of 
ice which crush everything upon which they fall. 

When the earth was completed as the home 
of the human family, violent changes upon its 
surface were incompatible with the security of 



52 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

life, and the progress of civilization. The powers 
of the physical world were therefore put under 
restraint, when man obtained dominion over the - 
earth ; and after the great catastrophe wh' i ch 
destroyed almost every living thing, the "bow 
was set in thq clouds," a covenant, between God 
and man, that the elements should not again be 
his destroyer. If the Almighty then, since the 
creation of man, u broke up the fountains of the 
deep, and opened the windows of the heavens," 
and thus, by apparently natural causes, covered 
the whole earth with an ocean that rose above 
the Himalaya and the Andes, — why may He 
not at different periods, or during the whole 
course of the earth's formation, have deposited 
its strata by a rapid precipitation of their atoms 
from the waters which suspended them ? The 
period of the earth's formation would, upon this 
principle, be reduced to little more than the uni- 
ted generations of the different orders of plants 
and animals which constitute its organic remains. 
But even the period thus computed from the 
supposed duration of animal life may be still 
farther shortened. Plants and animals which, 
in our day, require a century for their de- 



GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 58 

velopment, may in primitive times have shot 
up in rank luxuriance, and been ready, in a 
few days, or months, or years, for the great pur- 
pose of exhibiting, by their geological distri- 
bution, the progressive formation of the earth. 
There are other points, in geological theory, 
which, though mere inferences from a very 
limited number of facts, have been employed, as 
if they were absolutely true, to support erroneous 
and dangerous theories ; and but for this misap- 
plication of them we should not have called in 
question opinions in themselves reasonable only 
when viewed as probable truths. The geological 
inference to which we allude is, that man did not 
exist during the period of the earth's formation. 
No work of human skill — no fragment of the 
skeleton — no remains of the integuments of 
man have been found among the plants and 
animals which occupy the graves of primaeval 
times. If it be quite certain, or rather suffi- 
ciently credible, which we think it is, that all 
the formations with fossil remains were depos- 
ited before the advent of Adam, it is barely 
possible that pre-adamite races may have inhab- 
ited the earth simultaneously with the animals 
which characterize its different formations . But 
5* 



54 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

though possible, and to a certain extent available, 
as the basis of an argument against a startling 
theory, we cannot admit its probability. Man, 
as now constituted, could not have lived amidst 
the storms and earthquakes and eruptions of a 
world in the act of formation. His timid nature 
would have quailed under the multifarious con- 
vulsions around him. The thunder of a boiling 
and tempest-driven ocean would have roused 
him from his couch, as its waters rushed upon 
him at midnight : Torrents of lava or of mud 
would have chased him from his hearth ; and 
if he escaped the pestilence from animal and 
vegetable death, the vapor of the subterranean 
alembics would have suffocated him in the open 
air. The house of the child of civilization was 
not ready for his reception. The stones that 
were to build and roof it, had not quitted their 
native beds. The coal that was to light and 
heat it, was either green in the forest, or black- 
ening in the storehouse of the deep. The iron 
that was to defend him from external violence, 
lay buried in the ground ; and the rich materials 
of civilization, the gold, the silver, and the gems, 
even if they were ready, had not been cast within 
his reach, from the hollow of the Creator's hand. 



GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 55 

But if man could have existed amid catas- 
trophes so tremendous and privations so severe, 
his presence was not required, for his intellectul 
powers could have had no suitable employment. 
Creation was the field on which his industry was 
to be exercised and his genius unfolded ; and 
that Divine reason which was to analyze and 
combine would have sunk into sloth before the 
elements of matter were let loose from their 
prison-house, and Nature had cast them in her 
mould. But though there was no specific time 
in this vast chronology which we could fix as 
appropriate for the appearance of man, yet we 
now perceive that he entered with dignity at its 
close. "When the sea was gathered into one 
place, and the dry land appeared, a secure foot- 
ing was provided for our race. "When the waters 
above the firmament were separated from the 
waters below it, and when the light which ruled 
the day, and the light which ruled the night, 
were displayed in the azure sky, man could look 
upward into the infinite in space, as he looked 
downward into the infinite in time. When the 
living creature after his kind appeared in the 
fields, and the seed-bearing herb covered the 



56 MOKE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

earth, human genius was enabled to estimate the 
power, and vf isdom, and bounty of its Author, 
and human labor received and accepted its 
commission, when it was declared from on high 
that seed-time and harvest should never cease 
upon the earth. 

But though we think it probable from these 
considerations, that intellectual races could not 
occupy the earth during its formation, yet we 
know not what disclosures might be made had 
we the power of examining the whole of the 
strata which girdle the earth. The dry land 
upon our globe occupies only one-fourth of its 
whole superficies— all the rest is sea. How much 
of this fourth part have geologists been able to 
examine ? and how small seems to be the area 
of stratification which has been explored ? We 
venture to say not one-fiftieth part of the whole, 
and yet upon the results of so partial a survey, 
there has been founded a startling generaliza- 
tion. The intellectual races, if they did exist, 
must have lived at a distance from the ferocious 
animals that may have occupied the seas and 
the jungles of the ancient world, and conse- 
quently their remains could not have been found 



GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EAETH. 57 

in the ordinary fossiliferous strata. Their dwel- 
ling-place may have been in one or more of the 
numerous localities of our continents not yet 
explored, or in those immense regions of the 
earth which are now coyered by the great oceans 
of the globe ; and till these oceans haye quitted 
their beds, or some great convulsions haye up- 
heaved and laid bare the strata above which the 
races in question may have lived and died, we 
are not entitled to maintain it as a demonstrated 
truth, that the ancient earth was under the sole 
dominion of the brutes that perish. 

But without waiting for the result of catas- 
trophes like these, the future of geology, even 
if restricted to existing continents and islands, 
may be pregnant with startling discoveries, and 
the remains of intellectual races may be found 
even beneath the primitive Azoic formations 
of the earth. The astronomers of the pres- 
ent day have penetrated far into the celestial 
depths, compared with those of the preceding 
age,' — descrying in the remotest space glorious 
creations, and establishing mighty laws. Like 
them, may not geologists descend deeper into 
the abyss beneath, and discover in caverns yet 



58 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 

unexplored the upheaved cemeteries of primor- 
dial times. The earth, has yet to surrender its 
strongholds of gigantic secrets,' — and startling 
revelations are yet to be read on sepulchres of 
stone. It is not from that distant bourne where 
the last ray of starlight trembles on the tele- 
scopic eye that man is to receive the great secret 
of the world's birth, or of his future destiny. It 
is from the deep vaults to which primaeval life 
has been consigned that the history of the dawn 
of life is to be composed. Geologists have read 
that chronology backwards, and are decyphering 
downwards its pale and perishing alphabet. 
They have reached the embryos of vegetable 
existence, the probable terminus of the formation 
which has buried them. But wh.6 can tell what 
sleeps beyond! Another creation may lie be- 
neath — more glorious creatures may be entomb- 
ed there. The mortal coils of beings more love- 
ly, more pure, more divine than man, may yet 
read to us the unexpected lesson that we have 
not been the first, and may not be the last of 
the intellectual race. 

In order to compare the condition of the 
earth with that of the moon and the other 



GEOLOGICAL CONDITION" OF THE EARTH. 59 

planets of the Solar system, we must know 
something of its atmosphere, of its action in 
refracting, reflecting, and polarizing light, and 
of the phenomena which it will exhibit to other 
planets in its various states, as modified by the 
aqueous vapor which it contains, whether it 
exists in minute vesicles, or in masses of clouds. 
The light reflected by the atmosphere, when in 
its purest state, is a rich blue, becoming paler 
and paler as the aqueous vapor is increased. 
When the light of the sun reaches the eye, after 
having been transmitted through great lengths 
of the earth's atmosphere, it is bright red, pass- 
ing into orange and yellow when the length of 
its path is diminished. Considering, then, the 
diversity of climate in any one hemisphere of 
the globe, it is hardly possible that the earth, 
as seen from any given point in space, could 
appear free from clouds. When the sky is blue 
over large portions of the tropical regions, and 
smaller portions of the temperate and arctic 
zones, it is elsewhere covered with fleecy clouds, 
or throwing down its superabundant vapors in 
rain, or hail, or snow. The banks of fleecy 
clouds will reflect a brilliant light to the distant 



60 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

eye, while the pure air will exhibit the color 
of the land ; or of the ocean ? mixed with its own 
native tint of blue ; and, in certain positions of 
the sun, the red beams into which his pure rays 
have been changed by absorption, will display 
themselves in certain parts of the terrestrial disc. 
When the Earth, therefore, is reduced by dis- 
tance to the apparent size of Mars and Jupiter, 
it will exhibit a tint composed of all those which 
we have described. 

When the blue light of the sky, and the re- 
flected light of the clouds, are examined by an 
observer on the surface of the earth, it is found 
to be polarized, like the light which is reflected 
from the surfaces of transparent bodies ;* and, 
therefore, a greater or less portion of the light 
which reaches the eye of an observer, placed on 
another planet, must be polarized, and exhibit 
all the properties of that species of light. We 
thus obtain a certain test of the existence of 
water in the other planets of the system, and 
we are enabled to ascertain the truth of certain 
speculations respecting their condition, which 
affect the question of a plurality of worlds. 

* See Johnston's Physical Atlas. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ANALOGY BETWEN THE EARTH AND THE OTHER 
PLANETS. 

With the information contained in the pre- 
ceding chapter, respecting the structure of the 
earth and its atmosphere, we are now in a con- 
dition to compare it as an inhabited world with 
the other planets of our system, and to ascer- 
tain, from the analogies which exist between 
them, to what extent it is probable that they 
are either inhabited, or in a state of prepara- 
tion, as the earth once was, for the reception of 
inhabitants. 

In making this comparison, the first point 
which demands our attention is the position 
which the earth occupies in the Solar system. 
In reference to the number of the planets, which 
is nine, reckoning the asteriods as one, Jupiter 
is the fifth, or middle planet, and is otherwise 
6 



62 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

highly distinguished. Our earth, therefore, is 
neither the middle planet nor the planet nearest 
the sun, nor the planet farthest from that lumin- 
ary. In reference to the light and heat which 
the planets receive from the sun, the Earth has 
neither the warmest, nor the middle, nor the 
coldest place. With respect to the number of 
moons or satelites, the only us es of which that 
we know, is to give light to the planet, and pro- 
duce tides in its seas, the Earth has the lowest 
number, all the planets exterior to it having a 
larger number. If we compare it with the 
other planets in reference to their size, their 
form, their density, the length of their year, 
the length of their day, the eccentricity of 
their orbits, we shall find that in all these cases 
the earth is not in any respect distinguished 
above the rest. Hence we are entitled to 
conclude that the Earth, as a planet, has no 
pre-eminence in the Solar system to induce us 
to believe that it is the only inhabited world, or 
has any claim to be peculiarly favored by the 
Creator. 

In order to show the high probability that 
the other planets are either inhabited, or in a 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 68 

state of preparation for the reception of inhab- 
itants, we shall now proceed to compare the 
Earth with the planet Jupiter, one of the planets 
farther from the sun than ours, and then with 
Venus, one of the planets nearer the sun, — these 
planets representing the two groups into which 
the system may be divided. 

The diameter of Jupiter being 87,000 miles, 
and that of the Earth 7,926, the relative size or 
bulk of the two planets will be proportional to 
the squares of these numbers. Hence the size 
or bulk of Jupiter is 1,200 times greater than 
that of the Earth, and this alone is a proof that 
it must have been made for some grand and 
useful purpose. Like the Earth it is flattened 
at its poles, and it revolves round its axis in 
9 h 56 m , which is the length of its day. It en- 
joys different climates, and different seasons in 
its year ; but, what especially demands our at- 
tention, it is illuminated by four moons, capa- 
ble of supplying it with abundance of light 
during the short absence of the sun. Owing to 
the small inclination of Jupiter's axis to the 
plane of its orbit, which is only about three 
degrees, there is so little change in the temper- 



64 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

ature of its seasons, that it may be said to enjoy 
a perpetual spring. The rotation of the Earth 
about its axis produces currents in its atmos- 
phere parallel to the equator, which have re- 
ceived the name of the trade winds. On the 
surface of Jupiter astronomers have observed 
streaks or belts to the number of thirty, some 
of which extend to a great distance from its 
equator. Large spots, which change their form, 
have also been frequently seen upon Jupiter. 
M. Madler, by whom these observations have 
been chiefly made, is of opinion, that owing to 
the length of Jupiter's year, and the small 
change which takes place in the seasons, the 
masses of clouds in his atmosphere have their 
form, position, and arrangement more perma- 
nent than those in the atmosphere of the Earth, 
and he thinks it probable that the inhabitants 
in latitudes greater than 40° may never see the 
firmanent. 

The satellites of Jupiter afford him perpetual 
moonlight. They suffer eclipses like our moon 
when they encounter his huge shadow, and they 
frequently eclipse the sun when they pass be- 
tween him and the planet. These satellites 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 65 

afford to their primary planet four months of 
different lengths, one of which is four Jovian 
days, and the next eight, seventeen, and forty 
days respectively. 

With so many striking points of resemblance 
between the Earth and Jupiter, the unprejudiced 
mind cannot resist the conclusion that Jupiter 
has been created like the Earth for the express 
purpose of being the seat of animal and intel- 
lectual life. The Atheist and the Infidel, the 
Christian and the Mahometan, — men of all 
creeds and nations and tongues, — the philoso- 
pher and the unlettered peasant, have all re- 
joiced in this universal truth ; and we do not 
believe that any individual, who confides in the 
facts of astronomy, seriously rejects it. If such 
a person exists, we would gravely ask him for 
what purpose could so gigantic a world have 
been framed. Why does the sun give it days 
and nights and years ? Why do its moons throw 
their silver light upon its continents and its seas? 
Why do its equatorial breezes blow perpetually 
over its plains ? unless to supply the wants, and 
administer to the happiness of living beings. 
In studying this subject,persons who have only 
6* 



66 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

a superficial knowledge of astronomy, though, 
firmly believing in a plurality of worlds, have 
felt the force of certain objections, or rather 
difficulties, which naturally present themselves 
to the inquirer. The distance of Jupiter from 
the sun is so great that the light and heat 
which he receives from that luminary is sup- 
posed to be incapable of sustaining the same 
animal and vegetable life which exists on the 
Earth. If we consider the heat upon any planet 
as arising solely from the direct rays of the sun, 
the cold upon Jupiter must be very intense, 
and water could not exist upon its surafce in a 
fluid state. Its rivers and its seas must be 
tracks and fields of ice. But the temperature of 
a planet depends upon other causes,' — ■upon the 
condition of its atmosphere, and upon the inter- 
nal heat of its mass. The temperature of our 
own globe decreases as we rise in the atmos- 
phere, and approach the sun, and it increases 
as we descend into the bowels of the Earth and 
go farther from the sun. In the first of these 
cases, the increase of heat as we approach the 
surface of the Earth from a great height in a 
balloon, or from the summit of a lofty moun- 



THE EAKTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 67 

tain, is produced by its atmosphere ; and in 
Jupiter the atmosphere may be so formed as to 
compensate to a certain extent the diminution 
in the direct heat of the sun arising from the 
great distance of the planet. In the second 
case, the internal heat of Jupiter may be such 
as to keep its rivers and seas in a fluid state, 
and maintain a temperature sufficiently genial 
to sustain the same animal and vegetable life 
which exists upon our own globe. 

These arrangements, however, if they are 
required, and have been adopted, cannot con- 
tribute to increase the feeble light which Jupiter 
receives from the sun; but in so far as the 
purposes of vision are concerned, an enlarge- 
ment of the pupil of the eye, and an increased 
sensibility of the retina, would be amply suffi- 
cient to make the sun's light as brilliant as it 
is to us. The feeble light .reflected from the 
moons of Jupiter would then be equal to that 
which we derive from our own, even if we do 
not adopt the hypothesis, which we shall after- 
wards have occasion to mention, that a brilliant 
phosphorescent light may be excited in the 
satellites by the action of the solar rays. 



68 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

Another difficulty has presented itself, though 
very unnecessarily, in reference to the shortness 
of the day in Jupiter. A day of ten hours has 
been supposed insufficient to afford that period 
of rest which is requisite for the renewal of our 
physical functions when exhausted with the 
labors of the day. This objection, however, 
has no force. Five hours of rest is surely suffi- 
cient for five hours of labour ; and when the 
inhabitants of the temperate zone of our own 
globe reside, as many of them have done, for 
years in the arctic regions, where the length 
of the days and nights are so unusual, they 
have been able to perform their functions as 
well as in their native climates. 

A difficulty, however, of a more serious kind is 
presented by the great force of gravity upon so 
gigantic a planet as Jupiter. The stems of 
plants, the materials of buildings, the human 
body itself, would, it is imagined, be crushed by 
their own enormous weight. This apparently 
formidable objection will be removed by an ac- 
curate calculation of the force of gravity upon 
Jupiter, or of the relative weight of bodies on 
its surface. The mass of Jupiter is 1230 times 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 69 

greater than that of the Earth, so that if both 
planets consisted of the same kind of matter, a 
man weighing 150 pounds on the surface of 
the Earth would weigh 150x1200, or 180,000 
pounds at a distance from Jupiter's centre equal 
to the Earth's radius. But as Jupiter's radius 
is eleven times greater than that of the Earth, 
the weight of bodies on his surface will be dim- 
inished in the ratio of the square of his radius, 
that is, in the ratio of 11x11, or 121 to 1. 
Consequently, if we divide 180,000 pounds by 
121, we shall have 1487 pounds as the weight 
of a man of 150 pounds on the surface of 
Jupiter, that is less than ten times his weight 
on the earth. But the matter of Jupiter is 
much lighter than the matter of our Earth, in 
the ratio of 24 to 100, the numbers which re- 
present the densities of the two planets, so that 
if we diminish 1487 pounds in the ratio of 24 
to 400, or divide it by 417, we shall have 312 
pounds as the weight of a man on Jupiter, who 
weighs on the Earth only 150 pounds, that is, 
only double his weight — a difference which ac- f 
tually exists between many individuals on our 
own planet. A man, therefore constituted like 



70 KOBE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

ourselves, could exist without inconvenience 
upon Jupiter ; and plants, and trees, and build- 
ings, such as occur in our own Earth, could 
grow and stand secure in so far as the force of 
gravity is concerned. 

In removing difficulties, and answering ob- 
jections such as these, we have conceded too 
much to the limited conceptions of the persons 
who have felt the one and adduced the other. 
To assume that the. inhabitants of the planets 
must necessarily be either men or anything 
resembling them, is to have a low opinion of 
that infinite skill which has produced such a 
variety in the form and structure and functions 
of vegetable and animal life. In the various 
races of man which occupy our globe, there is 
not the same variety which is exhibited in the 
brutes that perish. Although the noble Anglo- 
Saxon stands in striking contrast with the 
Negro, and the lofty Patagonian with the dim- 
inutive Esquimaux, yet in their general form 
and structure, they are essentially the same in 
their physical and in their mental powers. But 
when we look into the world of instinct, and 
survey the infinitely varied forms which people 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 71 

the earth, the ocean, and the air; — when we 
range with the naturalist's eye from the elephant 
to the worm — from the leviathan to the infu- 
soria — and from the eagle to the ephemeron, 
what beauty of form — what diversity of function 
— what variety of purpose is exhibited to our 
view ! In all these forms of being, reason might 
have been given in place of instinct, and ani- 
mals the most hostile to man, and the most 
alien to his habits, might have been his 'friend 
and his auxiliary, in place of his enemy and his 
prey. If we carry our scrutiny deeper into 
nature, and survey the infinity of regions of life 
which the microscope discloses, and if we con- 
sider what other breathing worlds lie far beyond 
even its reach, we may then comprehend the 
variety of intellectual life with which our own 
planets and those of other systems may be 
peopled. Is it necessary that an immortal soul 
should be hung upon a skeleton of bone, or im- 
prisoned in a cage of cartilage and of skin ? 
Must it see with two eyes, and hear with two 
ears, and touch with ten fingers, and rest on a 
duality of limbs ? May it not reside in a Poly- 
phemus with one eyeball, or in an Argus with 



72 MOKE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

a hundred? May it not reign in the giant 
forms of the Titans, and direct the hundred 
hands of Briareus ? But setting aside the un- 
gainly creations of mythology, how many prob- 
able forms are there of beauty, and activity, 
and strength, which even the painter, the 
sculptor, and the poet could assign to the phy- 
sical casket in which the diamond spirit may 
be enclosed ; how many possible forms are there, 
beyond their invention, which eye hath not seen, 
nor the heart of man conceived ? 

But no less varied may be the functions which 
the citizens of the spheres have to discharge, — 
no less diversified their modes of life, — and 
no less singular the localities in which they 
dwell. If this little world demands such duties 
from its occupants, and yields such varied pleas- 
ures in their discharge : — If the obligations of 
power, of wealth, of talent, and of charity to 
humanize our race, to unite them in one brother- 
hood of sympathy and love, and unfold to them 
the wonderful provisions for their benefit which 
have been made in the structure and prepara- 
tion of their planetary home :— If these duties, 
so varied and numerous here, have required 



THE EAKTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 73 

thousands of years to ripen their fruit of gold, 
what inconceivable and countless functions may 
we not assign to that plurality of intellectual 
communities, which, have been settled, or are 
about to settle, in the celestial spheres ? What 
deeds of heroism, moral, and perchance physi- 
cal ! What enterprises of philanthropy, — what 
achievements of genius must be required in 
empires so extensive, and in worlds so grand ! 
On a planet more magnificent than ours, may 
there not be a type of reason of which the intel- 
lect of Newton is the lowest degree ? May there 
not be a telescope more penetrating, and a mi- 
croscope more powerful than ours ? — processes 
of induction more subtle, — of analysis more 
searching, — and of combination more profound ? 
May not the problem of three bodies be solved 
there, — the enigma of the luminiferous ether 
unriddled, — and the transcendentalisms of mind 
embalmed in the definitions and axioms and 
theorems of geometry ? Chemistry may there 
have new elements, new gases, new acids, new 
alkalies, new earths and new metals ; — geo- 
logy, new rocks, new classes of cataclysms, and 
new periods of change ; — and zoology, miner- 
7 



74 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

alogy and botany, new orders and species, new 
forms of life, and new types of organization, — 
all demanding higher powers of reason, and 
leading to a warmer appreciation, and a higher 
knowledge of the ways and works of God. But 
whatever be the intellectual occupation of the 
inhabitants of the planets, who can doubt that 
it will be one of their objects to study and de- 
velop the material laws which are in operation 
around them, above them, beneath them, and 
beyond them in the skies ? 

Under what suns, in what climates, and in 
what habitations, these planetary races are to 
live and move, may be conjectured from the 
place which they occupy in the system, and 
from the phenomena which they exhibit when 
examined by the telescope. It may not be in 
cities exposed to the extremes of heat and cold, 
— nor in houses made with hands, — nor in the 
busy market-place, — nor in the noisy Forum, — 
nor in the solemn temple,— nor in the ark which 
rests upon the ocean, that these feats of power 
and reason are to be performed. The being of 
another mould may have his home in subter- 
raneous cities warmed by central fires, — or in 



THE EAKTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 75 

crystal caves cooled by ocean tides, — or lie may 
float with the Nereids upon the deep, or mount 
upon wings as eagles, or rise upon the pinions 
of the dove, that he may flee away and be at rest, 
Amid our bald and meagre conceptions of the 
conditions of planetary life, we may gather some 
ideas from the existences around us. In the cities 
and dwellings and occupations of the world of 
instinct in our own planet, rude though they 
be, we may trace the lineaments of the cities 
and dwellings and occupations of reason in 
another. 

In continuing the argument for a plurality 
of worlds, it would be an unnecessary waste of 
time to enter into the same details respecting the 
analogy between the Earth and the other three 
superior planets of the system, as we have done 
with respect to Jupiter. In some, the analogies 
are more stringent than in others, but in all of 
them they are sufficiently numerous and power- 
ful to command the assent of the unprejudiced 
mind. 

In all the three planets, superior to Jupiter, 
namely, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the di- 
rect light and heat of the sun is greatly less 



76 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

than that which, falls upon Jupiter, being in- 
versely proportional to the squares of their dis- 
tances from the centre of their radiations ; but 
we have already seen, that in so far as vision 
and local temperature are concerned, the light 
of the sun may be as brilliant, and the temper- 
ature of the seasons as genial as they are 
upon our own Earth. An increased degree of 
sensibility in the nervous membrane of the 
eye, with an enlarged pupil, may give to light, 
geometrically feeble, a sufficient energy of sen- 
sation, while a different condition of their at- 
mospheres, and a more ardent focus of internal 
heat, may maintain an agreeable temperature 
upon their surface. 

The planet Saturn, encompassed with the 
extraordinary appendage of a ring, fitted to 
illuminate extensive portions of his surface, and 
encircled with eight moons to light him in the 
sun's absence, and revolving round him in 
months varying from the length of one day up 
to eighty days, has always been an object of 
peculiar interest to the astronomer, and of won- 
der to the ordinary student of nature. The 
plane of the ring, which we have described in 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 77 

the preceding chapter, is parallel to the equator, 
and has inequalities like mountains on its sur- 
face. The eight satellites of Saturn are placed 
at distances varying from 98,000 miles, the dis- 
tance of the nearest from the planet, to nearly 
two millions of miles ; and as the first five sat- 
ellites are nearer Saturn than our moon is to 
the earth, they will exhibit larger discs of light 
to the planet ; and if, what is very probable, they 
are greatly larger than our moon, the firmament 
must exhibit a brilliant picture bespangled with 
large discs of light with a variety of phases, and 
spanned with the brilliant arches of the planet's 
ring. As the nearest of these moons, which is 
called Mimas, performs its revolution in twenty- 
two hours and a half, its phases must change 
from the slenderest crescent to the state of half 
moon in the course of five hours, and as its disc 
(if it has the same real size as our moon) must 
appear two and a half times larger, the boundary 
between the light and dark hemisphere will be 
seen actually advancing upon the body of the 
satellite. For the same reason, the motion of 
this satellite among the stars will be more per- 
ceptible than the movement of our stars and 



78 MORE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

planets from their rising to their setting, pro- 
duced by the diurnal motion of the Earth * 

In respect to the force of gravity upon the 
surface of Saturn, the analogy between it and 
the earth is stronger than in the case of Jupiter. 
The density of Saturn is to that of the Earth as 
24 to 100, or a little more than four times less, 
so that since the earth is 5|- times denser than 
water, the density of Saturn will be lfths that 
of water. In like manner it may be shown that 
Uranus and Neptune have nearly the same 
density as water, and if we make the same esti- 
mation of the force of gravity upon the three 
superior planets, we shall find that in Saturn 
the force of gravity is a little greater than in the 

* The appearance of the system of rings from the surface of Saturn, and 
of the phenomena which they produce in eclipsing occasionally and tem- 
porarily the sun, the eight satellites, and other celestial bodies, was for the 
first time accurately described by Dr. Lardner in a memoir published in 
the twenty-second volume of the Transactions of the Astronomical Society 
for 1853. Dr. Lardner has "there demonstrated that the infinite skill of 
the great Architect of the Universe has not permitted that this stupendous 
annular appendage, the use of which still remains undiscovered, should be 
the cause of such darkness and desolation to the inhabitants of the plane-t, 
and such an aggravation of the rigors of their fifteen years' winter, as it 
has been inferred to be from the reasonings of the eminent astronomers 
already named, (Bode, Herschel, and Madler,) as well as many others, 
who have either adopted their conclusions, or arrived at like inferences 
by other arguments." " In short," Dr. Lardner adds, " the ring has no 
such character as would deprive the planet of any essential condition of 
habitability." — Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 59. 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 79 

Earth, and in Uranus and Neptune a little less, 
so that human beings like ourselves would ex- 
perience no inconvenience from the greater or 
less force of gravity on these planets, and plants 
and trees, and architectural structures, of the 
same character with our own, would have the 
same strength and permanence. 

In consequense of the rotation of Saturn upon 
his axis in about 10 J- hours, belts and streaks are 
seen upon his surface, produced doubtless, like 
those in Jupiter, by equatorial currents like our 
trade winds. Variable masses of cloud diversify 
his surface, sometimes changing their place, and 
sometimes continuing so long in one position, 
that they reappear at one side of the planet's 
disc in the same place which they occupied five 
hours before when they disappeared on the 
other side of it. 

In the two remote planets, Uranus and Nep- 
tune, the principal point of analogy with our 
Earth is, that they are lighted with moons, 
Uranus with six satellites, and Neptune with 
one or perhaps tivo, though we have no doubt 
that, like the other distant planets, he will be 
found to possess a greater number. The power 



80 MOEE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

of our best telescopes lias not enabled astrono- 
mers to discover belts and clouds upon these 
two planets, and thus determine their daily 
motion. The oblate form of their discs, too, 
remains to be discovered ; but notwithstanding 
the absence of these points of analogy, the very 
existence of such large globes of matter revolv- 
ing round the sun, and lighted up with moons, 
cannot fail to satisfy the unprejudiced and in- 
quiring mind that they must have been created 
for some grand purpose worthy of their Maker. 
In the present state of our know ledge, it is im- 
possible to conceive any other purpose but that 
of being the residence of animal and intellec- 
tual life. 

There is one consideration in reference to the 
two remote planets,. Uranus and Neptune, which 
some of our readers may regard as adding to 
the probability of their being worlds like our 
own. Some writers, or rather one, for we know 
of only one, have asserted that " however desti- 
tute planets, moons, and rings may be of inhab- 
itants, they are at least vast scenes of God's 
presence, and of the activity with which He 
carries into effect everywhere the laws of na- 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 81 

ture, and that the glory of creation arises from 
its being not only the product, but the constant 
field of God's activity and thought, wisdom and 
power."*. We shall not venture to ascertain how 
much more of God's glory is seen in the mere 
material structure of Saturn and his ring, and of 
Jupiter and his satellites, than it is in the minut- 
est insect that lives but for an hour ; nor shall 
we compare gigantic masses of self-luminous or 
illuminated matter with the smaller organisms 
which are daily presented to us. We shall 
admit that the vulgar eye even is delighted 
with the sight of planets made gorgeous by 
the telescope, — that astronomers are entranced 
by the study of their movements and their per- 
turbations, and that the useful -art of navigation 
may derive some advantage from the eclipses 
of Jupiter's satellites. The poet may rejoice in 
" the soft and tender beauty of the moon," and 
in the inspirations of the morning and the even- 
ing star. But where is the grandeur, — where 
the utility, — where the beauty, — where the 
poetry of the two almost invisible stars which 
usurp the celestial names of Uranus and Niep* 

* Of the Plurality of Worlds : an Essay^ p. 254. 



82 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

tune, and which, have "been seen by none but a 
very few even of the cultivators of astronomy ? 
The grand discoveries of Kepler, Newton, and 
Laplace, were made before these planets were 
known. They contribute nothing to the arts 
of terrestrial life : they neither light the lover 
to his mistress, nor mark by their silver ray the 
happy hours which are consecrated to friendship 
and to love. They are doubtless the abodes of 
life and intelligence— the colossal temples where 
their Creator is recognized and worshipped — - 
the remotest watch-towers of our system from 
which His works may be better studied, and His 
glories more easily descried. 

From Jupiter and the planets beyond him, 
we now proceed to the examination of Mars, 
Venus, and Mercury, and here we shall find 
analogies more or less numerous and striking 
with those of our own Earth. In this group of 
planets no moon or satellite has yet been discov- 
ered, and it is probable that none exists. An 
atmosphere of great height, and of a peculiar 
constitution, might in all of them supply the 
place of a moon. The density of Mars and 
Venus is very nearly the same as that of the 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 83 

Earth, the former being 0*95, and that of the 
latter 0*92, while the density of Mercury is a 
little greater, being 1*12. As the diameter of 
Venus is nearly equal to that of the Earth, the 
force of gravity will be almost exactly the same ; 
and in Mars and Mercury, whose diameters are 
only about one half that of the Earth, the weight 
of bodies are equally about one half of what 
they would be if placed upon our own globe. 
In Mars, Venus, and Mercury, the length of 
the day is almost exactly twenty-four hours, the 
same as that of the Earth,* and in many other 
points the analogy with our globe is very strik- 
ing. Continents and oceans, and green savan- 
nas, have been observed upon Mars, and the 
snow of his polar regions has been seen to dis- 
appear with the heat of summer. In Venus 
and Mercury their surface is variegated with 
mountain chains of great elevation, and but for 
the brilliancy of their discs, and the clouds which 
envelop them, the telescope would have discover- 
ed to us more minute details upon their surface. 

* The mean of the length of the day in these four planets, is within less 
than a minute of twenty-four hours. The days of Mercury, Venus, the 
Earth, and Mars, are respectively 24 h 5 m ; 23& 21* ; 24 h 7», and 24& 7* ; 
the mean of- which is 24* 0» 45«. 



1 



84 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE, 

The planets of this inferior group are sur- 
rounded with atmosphere like our Earth. We 
actually see the clouds floating in the atmos- 
phere of Mars. Yenus and Mercury are sur- 
rounded with the same medium essential to 
life, and in Venus astronomers have even ob- 
served the morning and the evening twilight. 
These atmospheres are doubtless the means of 
tempering the great heat which Yenus and 
Mercury receive from the sun ; and the same 
purpose may be answered by the absence of 
that internal heat which exists in the Earth, 
and which may be used to increase the tem- 
perature of the remoter planets. The intense 
light which Yenus and Mercury receive from 
the sun may be adduced as an objection to the 
existence, upon these planets, of inhabitants like 
ourselves ; but this objection is at once removed 
by the consideration that this intense light may 
be completely moderated either by a very small 
pupil, or by a diminished sensibility of the 
retina, or by a combination of both. 

Such are the numerous analogies which 
subsist between our Earth and Mars, Yenus 
and Mercury. They afford, as a popular writer 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 85 

observes, " The highest degree of probability, 
not to say moral certainty, to the conclusion, 
that these three planets which, with the Earth, 
revolve nearest to the Sun, are, like the Earth, 
appropriated by the omnipotent Creator and 
Euler of the universe to races very closely 
resembling, if not absolutely identical with 
those with which the Earth is peopled."* After 
concluding his examination of the four exterior 
planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, 
the same able and candid writer concludes his 
elaborate chapter in these words :— 

" "We have thus presented the reader with a 
brief and rapid sketch of the circumstances 
attending the two chief groups of globes which 
compose the solar system, and have explained 
the discoveries and striking analogies, which 
taken together amount to a demonstration, that 
in the economy of the material universe these 
globes must subserve the same purposes as the 
Earth, and must be the dwellings of tribes of 
organized creatures having a corresponding 
analogy to those which, inhabit the Earth. 

" The differences of organization and char- 

* Dr. Lardner's Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 23. 



86 MORE WOBLDS THAN ONE. 

acter which would be suggested as probable or 
necessary by the different distances of the 
several planets from the common source of 
light and heat, and the consequent differences 
of intensity of these physical agencies upon 
them, by the different weights of bodies on 
their surfaces, owing to the different intensities 
of their attractions on such bodies, by the 
different intervals which mark the alternation 
of light and darkness, are not more than are 
seen to prevail among the organized tribes, 
animal and vegetable, which inhabit different 
regions of the earth. The animals and plants 
of the tropical zones differ in general from those 
of the temperate and the polar zones, and even 
in the same zone we find different tribes of 
organized creatures flourish at different eleva- 
tions above the level of the sea. There is no- 
thing more wonderful than this in the varieties 
of organization suggested by the various phys- 
ical conditions by which the planets are af- 
fected."* 

To this opinion of a mathematician and a 
natural philosopher, who has studied more than 

* Dr. Lardner^s Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 63. 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 87 

any preceding writer the analogies between the 
Earth and the other planets, we may add that 
of the most distinguished naturalist and anato- 
mist of the present day, who speaks in an 
authoritative tone as representing the cultiva- 
tors of that department of science which he 
has enriched with such important discoveries, 
" We have been accustomed," says Professor 
Owen,* "to regard the vertebrate animals as 
being characterized by the limitation of their 
limbs to two pairs, and it is true that no more 
diverging appendages are developed for station, 
locomotion, and manipulation. But the rudi- 
ments of many more pairs are present in many 
species. And though they may never he devel- 
oped as such in this planet, it is quite conceivable 
that certain of them may be so developed, if the 
vertebrate type should be that on which any of 
the inhabitants of other planets of our system are 
organized. 

" The conceivable modifications of the verte- 
brate archetype are very far from being ex- 
hausted by any of the forms that now inhabit 
the Earth, or that are known to have existed 
here at any period. 

* On the Nature of Limbs. London, 1849, pp. 83, 84 



88 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

" The naturalist and anatomist, in digesting 
the knowledge which the astronomer has been 
able to furnish regarding the planets and the 
mechanism of the satellites for illuminating 
the night season of the distant orbs that revolve 
round one common sun, can hardly avoid specu- 
lating on the organic mechanism that may exist 
to profit by such sources of light, and which 
MUST EXIST if the only conceivable purpose 
of these beneficent arrangements is to be ful- 
filled. But the laws of light, as of gravitation, 
being the same in Jupiter as here, the eyes of 
such creatures as may disport in the soft re- 
flected beams of its moons will probably be or- 
ganized on the same dioptric principles as those 
of the animals of a like grade of organization 
on this earth. And the inference as to the 
possibility of the vertebrate type being the basis 
of the organization of some of the inhabitants of 
other planets, will not appear so hazardous 
when it is remembered that the orbits or pro- 
tective cavities of the eyes of the vertebrata 
of this planet are constructed of modified ver- 
tebrae. Our thoughts are free to soar as far as 
any legitmate analogy may seem to guide 
them rightly on the boundless ocean of un- 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 89 

known truth. And if censure be merited for 
here indulging, even for a moment, in pure 
speculation, it may perhaps be disarmed by the 
reflection that the discovery of the vertebrate 
archetype could not fail to suggest to the anato- 
mist many possible modifications of it beyond 
those that we know to have been realized in 
this little orb of ours." 

In referring to the doctrine of Plato respect- 
ing ideal archetypes, as thus revived by Pro- 
fessor Owen, the author of the Essay on a 
Plurality of Worlds pays the following just 
compliment to this eminent anatomist: — "If a 
mere metaphysician," says he, " were to attempt 
to revive this mode of expressing the doctrine, 
probably his speculations would be disregarded, 
or treated as a pedantic resuscitation of obsolete 
Platonic dreams, but the adoption of such lan- 
guage must needs be received in a very different 
manner when it proceeds from a great discoverer 
in the field of natural knowledge : when it is, 
as it were, forced upon him as the obvious and 
appropriate expression of the result of the most 
profound and comprehensive researches into 
the frame of the whole animal creation. The 



90 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

recent works of Mr. Owen, and especially one 
work On the Nature of Limbs, are full of the 
most energetic and striking passages, inculcat- 
ing the doctrine which we have been endeav- 
oring to maintain. We may take the liberty 
of enriching our pages with one passage bearing 
upon the present part of the subject. 

" ' If the world were made by an antecedent 
mind or understanding, that is, by a Deity, then 
there must needs be an Idea and Exemplar of 
the whole world before it was made, and conse- 
quently, actual knowledge both in the order of 
Time and Nature before Things. But conceiving 
of knowledge as it was got by their own finite 
minds, and ignorant of any evidence of an ideal 
archetype for the world or any part of it, they 
(the Democritie philosophers who denied a Di- 
vine Creative Mind) affirmed that there was none, 
and concluded that there could be no knowledge 
or mind before the world was, as its cause.' " 

Before we read this passage in Professor 
Owen's work On Limbs, from which our essayist 
does not quote it,* for reasons which may be 

* The quotation may be from Professor Owen's other works referred 
to by the essayist ; to his work, for example, On the Archetype of the 
Vertebrate Skeleton. 



THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 91 

conjectured, we never doubted that the accom- 
plished professor did not believe in a plurality 
of worlds. Upon turning, however, to the 
volume itself, we found the beautiful passage 
which we have quoted in direct support of this 
great doctrine, which we may truly say, in the 
words of the essayist, u proceeds from a great 
discoverer in the field of natural knoivledge, 
and which was forced upon him (Professor 
Owen) as the obvious and appropriate express- 
ion of the result of the most profound and 
comprehensive researches into the frame of the 
lohole animal creation" 

But not only has the essayist dealt thus 
unfairly with his readers, he has treated Pro- 
fessor Owen in the same manner, by ascribing 
to him the first half of the preceding quotation, 
which the Professor quotes from "the learned 
Cudworth" in his own words, and which Cud- 
worth gives as the opinion of " the Democritic 
Atheists /" 

The observations of Professor Owen on ideal 
archetypes throw a real light on the subject of 
a plurality of worlds. If there be an ideal ex- 
emplar or archetype of vertebrate animals, and 



I 



92 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

if the conceivable modifications of that arche- 
type are far from being exhausted either in the 
animal forms which now inhabit the earth, or 
in the fossil remains of its primeval tenants, it 
is no idle speculation to suppose that the modi- 
fications may be developed in the vertebrate 
animals of other planets. We have a reason 
therefore, besides those of analogy and con- 
gruity, to believe in the existence of beings 
both intellectual and animal in the other 
regions of space. And as there must be an 
exemplar of intellectual as well as of physical 
man, may we not equally expect in the upper 
spheres modifications of mind which have not 
been exhibited in the terrestrial races ? If the 
rudimentary wing of man be expanded into the 
soaring pinion of the eagle, may not those 
mental powers which are only rudimentary 
here, and which fail in grasping the infinite 
and the eternal, expand themselves in another 
planet, and approximate to that divine intelli- 
gence of which they are here but a feeble 
emanation ? 

Under the influence of such views, may we 
not conceive also the archetype^of a world, 



THE EAETH AND THE OTHEE PLANETS. 93 

the rudiments of which, imperfectly developed 
in our own globe, may have all its modifica- 
tions exhausted in the planetary and sidereal 
domains ? The uniformity in the general design 
of the bodies of animals, which Sir Isaac New- 
ton compares with that " wonderful uniformity 
of the planetary system, which is the effect of 
choice," being thus compatible with an almost 
infinite diversity of parts, there may be the 
same numerous deviations from the archetype 
in the planetary world. "It may be allowed," 
says Sir Isaac Newton, "that God is able to 
create particles of matter of several sizes and 
figures, and in several proportions to space, 
and perhaps of different densities and forces, 
and thereby to vary the laws of Nature, and 
make worlds of several sorts in several parts of 
the universe."* If all the structures of created 
things are 

" Parts and proportions of a wondrous whole," 

the whole is the sidereal universe, and those 
parts and proportions are the inhabited planets, 
satellites, and suns of which it is composed. 

* Optics, edit. 1721, pp. 378, 379. 



OHAPTBE V. 

THE SUN, THE MOON, AND OTHEB SATELLITES, 
AND THE ASTEROIDS. 

So strong has been the belief that the Sun 
cannot be a habitable world, that a scientific 
gentleman* was pronounced by his medical at- 
tendant to be insane, because he had sent a 
paper to the Koyal Society, in which he main- 
tained " that the light of the sun proceeds from 
a dense and universal aurora which may afford 
ample light to the inhabitants of the surface 
beneath, and yet be at such a distance aloft, as 
not to annoy them;" — that " vegetation may 
obtain there as well as with us," — that " there 
may be water and dry land there, hills and 
dales, rain, and fair weather," — and that " as the 

* This gentleman was a Dr. Elliott, who was tried at the Old Bailey for 
shooting Miss Boydell. His medical attendant was Dr. Simmons, through 
whom he sent the paper for the Royal Society, and who referred the Court 
to the passage we have given as a proof of insanity. See Edinburgh En- 
cyclopedia, Art. Astronomy, vol. ii. p. 616, or Gentleman's Magazine for 
1787, p. 638. 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 95 

light and the seasons must he eternal," the 
" sun may easily be conceived to be by far the 
most blissful habitation of the whole system." 
In less than ten years after this apparently ex- 
travagant notion was considered a proof of in- 
sanity, it was maintained by Sir "William Her- 
schel as a rational and probable opinion, which 
might be deduced from his own observations 
on the structure of the sun. 

It is by no means necessary that those who 
believe in a plurality of worlds within the limits 
of our own system, should adopt the opinion 
that the sun which lights it, and the many satel- 
lites which light the primary planets, should be 
inhabited worlds. They form an entirely differ- 
ent class of bodies, and the arguments employed 
to show that they may be inhabited are of a 
different nature from those analogies which so 
strongly apply to the primary planets. The 
Sun has a great function to perform in control- 
ling the movements of the whole system. l£\ 
is the fixed mainspring of the great planetary 
chronometers, without which they would stop, 
and rush into destructive collision. It is the 
lamp which yields them the light without which 



96 MOKE WOELBS THAN ONE. 

life would perish. It is the furnace which sup- 
plies the fuel without which every organic struc- 
ture would be destroyed. Created for such no- 
ble purposes, we are led by no analogy to as- 
sign it to an additional function. The very 
same remark may be applied to our moon, and 
to all the satellites of the system. They are 
the domestic lamps which light the primary 
planets in the absence of the sun, and all of 
them, as well as our own, may exercise the 
other office of producing the titles of their oceans. 
It is quite otherwise with the primary planets : 
They have no conceivable function to perform 
but that of supporting inhabitants, unless we 
give them the additional one, which they are 
all fit for performing, and which they perform 
so well, of becoming large lamps to their satel- 
lites ; and if we invest them with this function, 
we obtain an argument in favor of the satel- 
lites themselves being inhabited. 

We are willing therefore to admit, that anal- 
ogy would fail us, were we to attempt by its 
processes to people the sun and the satellites 
with inhabitants. But analogy is not our only 
guide in such inquiries. The creations of the 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 97 

material world, whether they be of colossal or 
atomic magnitude, may have various and ap- 
parently contradictory purposes to perform ; 
and when we find that other purposes, not cog- 
nizable by our senses, or not demonstrable by 
our reason, may be promoted by such objects, 
we cannot resist the admission that such addi- 
tional objects may have been contemplated in 
their creation. The great masses of ironstone 
in our earth, while they are a necessary part 
of its framework, and are intended mainly to 
supply man with the tools of civilization, may 
have the tertiary or the secondary purpose of 
giving life to the needle of the compass, or of 
contributing to those great electrical and mag- 
netical arrangements which exist on our globe. 
While the sun then and the satellites are pri- 
marily intended for the great purposes which 
they so obviously subserve, it is not unreason- 
able to suppose that they may also be the seats 
of life and intelligence. 

After a skilful examination of the solar spots, 
Sir William Herschel has made it highly prob- 
able, if not certain, that the light of the sun 
issues from an outer stratum of self-luminous 
9 



98 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

or phosphoric clouds, beneath, which there is a 
second stratum of clouds of inferior brightness, 
which is intended to protect the solid and opaque 
body of the sun from the intense brilliancy and 
heat of the luminous clouds. In measuring, 
photometrically, the light of these three differ- 
ent structures, he found that the light reflected 
outwards by the clouds of the inferior stratum, 
was equal to 469 rays out of a 1000, or less than 
one-half of the light of the outer stratum, and 
that the light reflected by the opaque body of 
the sun below was only seven rays out of a 1000. 
Hence he concluded that the outer stratum of 
self-luminous or phosphoric clouds was the re- 
gion of that light and heat which are transmitted 
to the remotest part of the system ; while the 
inferior stratum, which is obviously of a different 
character from the other, is intended to protect 
the inhabitants of the sun from the blaze of the 
stupendous furnace which encloses them. In 
confirmation of these views, the faint illumina- 
tion, — the seven rays out of a thousand, is a 
proof that the light of the outer stratum, and 
consequently its heat, must be extremely small 
on the dark body of the luminary which we see 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 99 

through, what are called the solar spots, which 
are now universally admitted to be openings in 
the luminous stratum, and not opaque scoria 
floating on its surface. 

It is curious to observe how the conjectures 
in one science are sometimes converted into 
truths by the discoveries in another. Sir Wil- 
liam Herschel, as we have seen, has stated it as 
the result of many observations, that the light 
of the sun does not proceed, as was almost uni- 
versally believed, from a solid or liquid mass in 
a state of incandescence, or white heat, and the 
fact has been demonstrated by means of a beau- 
tiful optical discover}^ of M. Arago : — When a 
solid mass becomes luminous by being raised to 
a red or white heat, the rays which emanate 
from it in every direction do not proceed only 
from its outer superfices. They are radiated 
like those of heat from an infinite number of 
material points below the surface, and extend- 
ing to a certain small depth. The rays which 
traverse this thin luminous film, have been 
found by M. Arago to be polarized, whereas, 
had they proceeded from an envelope of flame, 
they would not have exhibited this remarkable 



100 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

property. Now, M. Arago has also discovered 
that the rays which issue obliquely from the 
sun's surface are not polarized, and hence he is 
authorized to draw the conclusion confirming 
Sir W. Herschel's opinion, that the light of the 
sun issues from a gaseous envelope of flame, or 
self-luminous matter. 

With this important result before us, we 
approach the question of the habitability of the 
sun, with the certain knowledge that the sun 
is not a red-hot globe, but that its nucleus is a 
solid opaque mass receiving very little light and 
heat from its luminous atmosphere. Sir Wil- 
liam commences his argument by inquiring into 
the probability of the moon being inhabited. 

"The moon," he says, "is a secondary planet, 
of a considerable size, the surface of which is 
diversified like that of the earth, by mountains 
and valleys. Its situation with "respect to the 
sun is much like that of the earth, and, by a 
rotation upon its axis, it enjoys an agreeable 
variety of seasons, and of day and night. To 
the moon our globe will appear to be a very 
capital satellite, undergoing the same regular 
changes of illumination as the moon does to 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES, 101 

the earth. The sun, the planets, and the starry 
constellations of the heavens, will rise and set 
there as they do here, and heavy bodies will fall 
on the moon as they do on the earth. There 
seems only to be wanting, in order to complete 
the analogy, that it should be inhabited like 
the .earth. 

" To this it may be objected, that we per- 
ceive no large seas in the moon ; that its atmos- 
phere (the existence of which has been doubted 
by many) is extremely rare, and unfit for the 
purposes of animal life ; that its climates, its 
seasons, and the length of its days, totally differ 
from ours ; that without dense clouds (which 
the moon has not) there can be no rain — per- 
haps no rivers, no lakes. In short, that not- 
withstanding the similarity which has been 
pointed out, there seems to be a decided differ- 
ence in the two planets we have compared. 

" My answer to this will be, that that very 
difference which is now objected will rather 
strengthen the force of my argument than lessen 
its value : We find even upon our globe, that 
there is the most striking difference in the situa- 
tion of the creatures that live upon it. While 



102 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

man walks upon the ground, the birds fly in 
the air, and fishes swim in water, we can cer- 
tainly not object to the convenience afforded by 
the moon, if those that are to inhabit its regions 
are fitted to their conditions as well as we on 
this globe are to ours. An absolute or total 
sameness seems rather to denote imperfections 
such as nature never exposes to our view ; and 
on this account, / believe the analogies that have 
been mentioned sufficient to establish the high pro- 
bability of the moonls being inhabited like the 
earth r 

Sir William Herschel proceeds to put the 
argument in another shape. He supposes that 
the inhabitants of the moon, and the other 
satellites, if they do exist, are of opinion that 
the earth and the other primary planets are of 
no other use but as lamps, and " attractive 
centres to direct their revolution round the 
sun ;" and then he asks, "if we ought not to 
condemn their ignorance as proceeding from 
want of attention and proper reflection ? 

From these considerations Sir William thinks 
that the inhabitants of the planets ought to be 
wiser than we have supposed those of their sa- 



THE SUN" AND THE SATELLITES. 103 

tellites to be. "From experience," lie adds, 
" we can affirm, that the performance of the 
most salutary offices to inferior planets is not 
inconsistent with the dignity of superior pur- 
poses ; and in consequence of such analogical 
reasonings, assisted by telescopic views which 
plainly favor the same opinion, we need not 
hesitate to admit that the sun is richly stored 
with inhabitants" 

From the phenomena of variable stars which 
Sir William supposes to arise from their having 
spots, and revolving about an axis, he considers 
it as hardly admitting of a doubt that the fixed 
stars are suns ; and he comes to the conclusion, 
that "if stars are suns, and suns inhabitable, \ 
we see at once what an extensive field of anima- J 
tion opens itself to our view." " It is true," he / 
adds, " that analogy may induce us to conclude, 
that since stars appear to be suns, and suns, 
according to the common opinion, are bodies 
that serve to enlighten, warm, and sustain a 
system of planets, we may have an idea of num- 
berless globes that serve for the habitation of 
living creatures. But if these suns themselves 
are primary planets, we may see some thousands 



104 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

of them with our own eyes, and millions by the 
help of telescopes ; when, at the same time, the 
same analogical reasoning still remains in full 
force, with regard to the planets which these suns 
may support.*' ' 

The opinion of so distinguished an astrono- 
mer, and so excellent a man as Sir William 
Herschel, cannot fail to have much weight on a 
subject like this ; but though we are desirous of 
strengthening rather than of controverting his 
arguments ? there are yet some difficulties to be 
removed, and some additional analogies to be 
adduced, before the mind can admit the startling 
proposition, that the sun ? moon, and all the sat- 
ellites, are inhabited spheres. We may reject 
this opinion, and yet believe implicitly in a 
plurality of worlds. 

In giving an account of these views of Sir 
William Herschel, Dr. Thomas Youngf has re- 
marked that " no clouds^ however dense, could 
impede the transmission of the sun's heat to the 
parts below ;" and that " if every other circum- 
stance permitted human beings to reside upon 

* Philosophical Transactions, 1795, pp. 65-69 ; and 1801, p. 296. 
f Elements of Natural Philosophy, vol. i. pp. 501, 502. 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 105 

it, their own weight would present an insuper- 
able difficulty, since it would become nearly 
thirty times as great as upon the surface of the 
earth, a man of moderate dimensions weighing 
above two tons" The first of these difficulties 
has certainly no weight If the heat of the 
sun's rays is proportional to its light, which it 
must be if it is a flame, the darkness of the sun's 
nucleus becomes a measure of its coolness. Even 
a human being might live and breathe upon the 
solid nucleus under the heat which is indicated 
by seven rays out of a thousand. The second 
objection is equally inapplicable, because Sir 
William has never asserted, and never did be- 
lieve, that the children of the sun were to be 
human beings, but, on the contrary, creatures 
" fitted to their condition as well as we on this 
globe are to ours." 

It has been stated as an objection to the prob- 
ability of the sun's being inhabited, that the 
whole firmament would be hid by the double at- 
mosphere with which he is surrounded, and that 
the solar inhabitants would be excluded from 
all knowledge of the planets which he guides, 
and of the sidereal universe of which he is a 



106 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

part. This, however, is not strictly true. The 
planets and stars would be seen distinctly 
through the numerous openings in the solar 
atmosphere, and as the sun's surface is compar- 
atively near to these openings, large portions 
of the heavens would "be thus exposed to view. 
In many parts of our own globe weeks pass away 
without our seeing the sun or the stars, and it 
cannot be doubted that the inhabitants of the 
sun might study astronomy through the casual 
openings in the luminous cupola which encloses 
them. 

The probability of the sun being inhabited is 
doubtless greatly increased by the simple consid- 
eration of its enormous size. Admitting, with 
Sir William Herschel, that the sun may have a 
temperature adapted even for human constitu- 
tions, it is difficult to believe that a globe of such 
magnificence, 88,000 miles in diameter, and 
upwards of one hundred times the size of our 
earth, should occupy so distinguished a place 
without intelligent beings to study and admire 
the grand arrangements which exist around 
them ; and it would be still more difficult to be- 
lieve, if it is inhabited, that a domain so exten- 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 107 

sive, so blessed with, perpetual light, is not occu- 
pied by the highest orders of intelligence. In 
the material world with which we are connected, 
life everywhere meets our eye. It is virtually 
almost a property of matter, and therefore to 
conceive huge masses of matter, that are warmed 
and heated, destitute of life, is to do violence to 
our strongest convictions. Those who believe 
life to be the result of second causes, must be- 
lieve in its universal diffusion ; and those who 
have the conviction, that into every living thing 
the Almighty must breathe its breath, will find 
it difficult to believe that the life which swarms 
around him on the earth, the ocean, and the 
air, of his own planet, has been denied to the 
other bodies of the system. Universal life upon 
universal matter is an idea to which the mind 
instinctively clings. Kingdoms without kings 
and subjects — continents without cities — cities 
without citizens — houses without families — / 
ships without crews, and railway trains without | 
passengers, are contingencies as probable as so- 
lar systems without planets, or planets without 
inhabitants. 

To the arguments so well stated by Sir Wil- 



108 MORE WORLDS THAN OHE, 

liam Herschel in favor of his opinion that the 
moon is inhabited, some important considera- 
tions may be added. The moon certainly has 
neither clouds nor seas ; but this is no reason 
why she may not hare an atmosphere, and a 
precipitation of moisture upon her surface, suffi- 
cient for the support of vegetable life. The 
moon may have streams or even rivers that lose 
themselves, as some of our own do, either in the 
dry ground, or in subterranean cavities. There 
may be springs too, and wells sufficient for the 
use of man ; and yet the evaporation from the 
water thus diffused may be insufficient for the 
formation of clouds, and consequently for the 
production of rain. The air may be charged 
to such a small extent with aqueous vapor, that 
it descends only in gentle dew r to be absorbed 
by vegetation, and again returned to the atmos- 
phere. Even in our own planet there are re- 
gions of some extent where rain never falls,* 
and where the aqueous vapor in the atmosphere 
descends only in refreshing dew. 

Although Sir John Herschel has stated that 

* See Johnston's Physical Atlas, 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 109 

there are no decisive indications of an atmos- 
phere in the moon, yet he has given the follow- 
ing very ingenious theory of the climate of the 
moon, which implies the existence of an atmos- 
phere, and even of running water : " The cli- 
mate of the, moon must be very extraordinary ; 
the alternations being that of unmitigated and 
burning sunshine fiercer than an equatorial 
noon, continued for a whole fortnight, and the 
keenest severity of frost, far exceeding that of 
our polar winters, for an equal time. Such a 
disposition of things must produce a constant 
transfer of whatever moisture may exist on its 
surface, from the point beneath the sun to that 
opposite, by distillation in vacuo, after the man- 
ner of the little instrument called a cryophorus. 
The consequence must be absolute aridity be- 
low the vertical sun, constant accretion of hoar 
frost in the opposite region, and perhaps a nar- 
row zone of running water at the borders of the 
enlightened hemisphere. It is possible, then, 
that evaporation on the one hand, and conden- 
sation on the other, may, to a certain extent, 
preserve an equilibrium of temperature, and 
mitigate the extreme severity of both climates ; 
10 



110 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

but this process, which, would imply the con* 
tinual generation and destruction of an atmos- 
phere of aqueous vapor, must, in conformity 
with what has been said above of a lunar at- 
mosphere, be confined within very narrow 
limits." 

In some of the principal craters, Sir John 
Herschel tells us " that there are decisive marks 
of volcanic stratification, arising from success- 
ive deposits of ejected matter, and evident in- 
dications of lava currents ;" and he admits that 
"there are large regions perfectly level, and 
apparently of a decided alluvial character"— 
conditions of the moon's surface, which demon- 
strate that there has been an atmosphere to 
promote combustion, and water to produce an 
alluvion. We do not understand how modern 
writers on astronomy have overlooked so com- 
pletely the many arguments for the existence 
of an atmosphere in the moon, which have been 
almost universally admitted. Facts observed a 
century ago by astronomers distinguished for 
their accuracy, are not less important because 
they have not been observed by their successors. 
Volcanoes may have been seen in the moon in 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. Ill 

the 18th century, though they have not been 
observed in the 19th ; and a decided indication 
of atmospheric action to-day, will not be dis- 
proved by its invisibility to-morrow. 

That volcanoes or burning regions have been 
observed in the dark portion of the moon's 
disc, cannot be doubted. In 1772, Beccaria, 
and in 1778, Ulloa, observed a bright white spot 
on the moon's disc. The spot observed by Ulloa 
and other three observers, resembled an opening 
in the moon ; but Beccaria was of opinion that 
this spot, as well as the one seen by himself, was 
the flame of a burning mountain. Various other 
persons have seen phenomena of the same kind ; 
but all doubt upon this subject was removed 
when so accurate an observer as Sir William 
Herschel announced the discovery of volcanoes 
in the moon. On the 4th May, 1783, he per- 
ceived a luminous spot in the obscure part of 
the moon, and two mountains which were formed 
from the Mi to the 13th of May ! On the 19th 
April, 1787, he perceived " three volcanoes in 
different places of the dark part of the moon. 
Two of them were already nearly extinct, or 
otherwise in a state going to break out, which 



112 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

perhaps may be decided next lunation. The 
third shows an actual eruption offire^ or lumin- 
ous matter. On the day following the volcano 
was burning with greater violence than the 
night before, and he found it equal to twice 
the size of the second satellite of Jupiter, and 
consequently, above three miles in diameter. 
Sir William observed that the eruption resem- 
bled a piece of burning charcoal. The exist- 
ence of recent volcanoes may therefore be 
considered as a proof that the moon has an 
atmosphere. 

Although Sir John Herschel broadly asserts, 
that in the occultations of stars and planets by 
the moon, there is no appearance whatever of 
an atmosphere ; yet we have many facts which 
stand in direct opposition to this statement. 
Cassini assures us, that he frequently observed 
the circular figure of Jupiter, Saturn, and the 
fixed stars changed into an elliptical one, when 
they approached either the dark or the illumin- 
ated limb of the moon. Mr. Dunn saw Saturn 
and his ring emerge from the moon's limb like 
a comet ; and M. Schroeter of Lilienthal, with 
fine telescopes, observed " s.everal obscurations 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 113 

and returning serenity, eruptions, and other 
changes in the lunar atmosphere. The same 
astronomer discovered the twilight of the moon 
at the extremity of its cusps, and he found by 
measurement, that the inferior or more dense 
part of the moon's atmosphere was not above 
1,500 feet, or the third of a mile high, while 
the height of the atmosphere where it could 
affect the brightness of a fixed star, is not above 
6,742 feet, or not much more than a mile. 
Hence we see the reason why changes are only 
occasionally produced upon stars occulted by 
the moon. Her atmosphere is greatly lower than 
her mountains. When the stars, therefore, en- 
ter, or emerge from, behind mountains higher 
than her atmosphere, they are not affected by 
refraction ; and when behind mountains or level 
plains lower than her atmosphere, they are af- 
fected by the refraction of the superincumbent 
air. 

It is evident, therefore, from all these facts, 
that in her volcanoes, active and extinct, in her 
twilight, and in her action upon immerging 
and emerging stars, the moon exhibits such 
proofs of an atmosphere, that we have a new 
10* 



114 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

ground from analogy for believing that slie 
either has inhabitants, or is in a state of prepa- 
ration for receiving them. 

Had the moon been destined to be merely a 
lamp to our earth, there was no occasion to 
variegate its surface with lofty mountains and 
valleys and extinct volcanoes, and cover it with 
large patches of matter, that reflect different 
quantities of light, and give its surface the ap- 
pearance of continents and seas. It would have 
been a better lamp had it been a smooth sphere 
of lime or of chalk. The existence of extinct 
volcanoes, the upheaval of lofty mountains, are 
proofs of a progression in its physical history — 
of a preparation, perhaps long ago made, for 
the reception of inhabitants. That it is not 
now preparing may be inferred from the ab- 
sence of every appearance of change, since its 
surface has been studied by astronomers. 

If it is probable, then, that the moon is in- 
habited, the same degree of probability may be 
extended to all the other satellites of the system. 
Their great distance from the earth prevents us 
from examining their surface ; but even without 
any indication of mountains and valleys, or of 



THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 115 

any forces that have disturbed or are still dis- 
turbing their surface, analogy compels us to 
conclude, that like all other material spheres, 
they must have been created for the double 
purpose of giving light to their primary plan- 
ets, and a home to animal and intellectual life. 



-+- 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM BOUND A 
DISTANT CENTRE. 

Had our Sun, with all the planets and comets 
which, he controls, been absolutely fixed in 
space, our system could have had no connection 
with the other systems of the universe. The 
immense void which separates it from the stars, 
would have been regarded as the barrier which 
confined it. Astronomers, however, have not 
only placed it beyond a doubt that the Solar 
system is advancing in absolute space, but have 
determined the direction in which it moves, 
and within certain limits the velocity of its 
motion. This great cosmical truth, the grand- 
est in astronomy, will furnish us with a new 
argument for a plurality of worlds. 

The first astronomer who suggested the idea 
of such a motion, was the celebrated Dr. Halley,* 

* Phil. Trans., 1718, No. 355, i. v. vi. 



MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 117 

who was led to it by comparing the places of 
Sirius, Arcturus, and Aldebaran, as determined 
by the observations of Hipparchus and Flam- 
steed. The French astronomers, Cassini and Le 
Monnier, noticed the same fact ; but it is to 
Tobias Mayer" 55, of Grottingen that we are in- 
debted for a more complete examination of the 
subject. By comparing the places of eighty 
fixed stars, as determined by Eoemer in 1706, 
with their places as observed by Lacaille in 
1750, and himself in 1756, he found that the 
greater number of them had a proper motion, 
that is, a motion that could not be explained 
by any cause connected with the motion of our 
earth in its orbit, or upon its axis. In order to 
explain this motion, he suggested that it might 
arise from a progressive motion of the sun to 
one quarter of the heavens, in consequence of 
which the stars to which he was approaching 
would appear to recede from each other, while 
those in the opposite region from which he was 
moving would appear to approach one another ; 
and he illustrated this idea by supposing a per- 
son walking in a field surrounded by trees, in 

* Opera Inedita^ 1775. De Motufixarum propria, pp. 77-8]. 



118 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

which case the trees to which he approached 
would appear to separate, or their distance to 
increase, while those which he left behind would 
appear to approach to one another, or their dis- 
tance to diminish, the trees on his right and 
left hand preserving the same apparent distance 
from each other. This was the true cause of 
the proper motion of the stars, but owing to 
the imperfection of astronomical instruments in 
the time of Eoemer, and even in Mayer's time, 
the observed proper motions did not correspond 
with his explanation of it ; and he quitted the 
subject with the remark, that many centuries 
must elapse before the true cause of this mo- 
tion can be explained. 

Astronomy, however, was advancing more 
rapidly than its most ardent votaries imagined, 
and, before a single century elapsed, the motion 
of the solar system in space, as the cause of the 
proper motion of the stars, became a great 
truth, which commanded the assent and admir- 
ation of every cultivator of astronomy. 

Although Dr. Wilson* of Glasgow had point- 
ed out, on theoretical principles, the probability 

* Thoughts on General Gravitation, 1777. 



MOTION OF THE SOLAK SYSTEM. 119 

of a progressive motion of the Sun, and Lam- 
bert* and La Landef had deduced it from the 
idea, that the same mechanical impulse which 
gave the sun its rotatory motion upon its axis, 
would displace its centre, and give it a motion 
of translation, yet it was not till Sir William 
Herschel,J in 1783, analysed the accurate ob- 
servations of Dr. Maskelyne on thirty -five fixed 
stars, that a decided step was made in the in- 
vestigation. He found that, in 1790, the solar 
system was advancing to the star I in the con- 
stellation Hercules, or to a point in the heavens 
whose right ascension is 260° 34', and north 
declination 26° 17'. By similar calculations, 
M. Prevost§ found the right ascension of the 
same point to be 230°, with north declination 
25 D ; and M. Klugelj| made it 260°, with north 
declination 27°, — a result almost the same as 
that of Sir William Herschel. 

It would be inconsistent with the nature of 
an Essay like this to enter into more minute 
details upon this subject. We shall, there- 

* Systeme du Monde, pp. 152-158 ; and Lettres Cosmologiques, 1761, 
p. 12a + Mem. Acad. Par. 1776, p. 513. 

% Phil. Trans., 1783, p. 247 ; 1805, pp. 233-256. 
§ Mem. Acad. Berlin, 1781. | Berlin Ephemeris, 1789. 



120 MORE WORLDS THAN OKK 

fore, give a tabular view of the results which 
have been obtained from places of the fixed 
stars, taken with the more accurate instruments 
of the present day, at the principal Observa- 
tories in Europe, and by the accomplished 
astronomers that direct them : — 

Right Ascension and Declination of the point to which 
the Solar System is advancing. 



Observers, 


Right Probable 
Ascension. Error. 


North Probable 
Declination. Error. 


wo. 
of Stai 
used. 


Argelander I. 


256° 25'4 ± 12° 21"3 


38° 37'-2 ± 9° 21 '-4 


21 


Argelander II. 


255° 9'-7 ± 8° 34"0 


38° 34"3 ± 5° 55"6 


50 


Argelander III. 


2G1° 10"7 ± 3° 48'-9 


30°58'-l ± 2° 3 J '-4 


319 


Lundahl IV. 


252° 24'-4 ± 5° 25"3 


14° 26'-l ± 4° 29'-3 


147 


OltoStruve V. 


261° 23"! ± 4° 49"9 


37° 35'-7 ± 4° ll'-8 


392 



Mean result VI. 259° 9-4 ± 2° 57' -5 34° 36'-5 ± 3' 24"5 

The signs + and — in this table indicate 
that the probable error may extend on each 
side of the tabular number, by the quantities 
before which they are placed. 

As the stars from which the preceding de- 
ductions have been made were tho«p which are 
visible in the Observatories of Em o^e, it became 
interesting to determine the point to which 
the Solar system was moving, from the proper 
motion of the stars that are visible in the 
Southern hemisphere. This investigation has 



MOTION OF THE SOLAK SYSTEM. 121 

been lately made by our distinguished coun- 
try-man, Mr. Thomas. Galloway,* by means of 
eighty-one stars that were observed byLacaille 
in 1751 and 1752, compared with those observ- 
ed by Mr. Johnson at St. Helena in 1829-1833, 
and by our countryman, Mr. Henderson, at the 
Cape, in 1830-1831. The result of this inquiry 
is, that the point of space to which our Sun is 
approaching is situated in 

Observer. R. Ascension. N. Declination, Erob. Error. 

Galloway, VII. 260° 0"6 ± 4° 31-4 34° 23M ± 5° 17'-2 

General Mean, VIII. 259° 35"0 ± 3° 44'-4 34° 30"0 ± 4° 20"8 

Hence it appears, that the result obtained 
from the southern stars agrees with that from 
the northern ones, within 25' of right ascension, 
and 7' of declination, a coincidence so extraor- 
dinary as to amount to a demonstration of the 
great physical truth which it indicates. 

But astronomers have not been satisfied with 
merely determining the direction to which the 
Sun, with all his planets, is advancing in space : 
They have calculated, within certain limits of 
error, the velocity with which they move ! 
Assuming the parallax of stars of the first 

* Phil. Trans., 1847. 



122 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 

magnitude to be 0' /# 209, as determined by bis 
father, M. Otto Struve finds that the angular 
value of the annual motion of the Solar system, 
if seen at right angles from the distance of such 
a star, is 0"'3392, with a probable error of 
(T-03623 ; and taking the radius of the Earth's 

orbit as unity, we have -^^g or 1-623, with a 

probable error of 0*229, as the annual motion 
of the Sun in space, reckoned in radii of the 
Earth's orbit. That is, taking 95 millions of 
miles as the mean radius of the earth's orbit, 
we have 95 X 1*623 154185 millions of 
miles, and consequently— 



The velocity of the Solar system 
Do. do. 

Do. do. 

Do. do. 

Do. do. 



English Miles. 

154,185,000 in the year. 

422,424 in a day. 

17,601 in an hour. 

293 in a minute. 

57 in a second. 



" Here, then," says M. Struve, senior, " we 
have the splendid result of the united studies 
of MM. Argelander, O. Struve, and Peters, 
grounded on observations made at the three 
Observatories of Dorpat, Abo, and Pulkova, and 
which is expressed in the following thesis : — ■ 
' The motion of the Solar system in space is 



MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 128 

directed to a point of the celestial vault, situated, 
on the right line which, joins the two stars » 
and p Her cutis, at a quarter of the apparent 
distance between these stars from n Herculis. 
The velocity of this motion is such, that the 
Sun, with all the bodies which depend upon 
him, advances annually in the above direction 
1*623 times the radius of the Earth's orbit, or 
33,550,000 geographical miles. The possible 
error of this last number amounts to 1,733,000 
geographical miles, or a seventh of the whole 
value. We may thus wager 400,000 to 1 that 
the Sun has a proper progressive motion, and 
1 to 1 that it is comprised between the limits 
of 38 and 29 millions of geographical miles.' "* 
As there is no such thing in the heavens as 
a rectilineal motion, it is evident that the Sun, 
with all his planets and comets, is in rapid 
.motion round an invisible body.f To that 
now dark and mysterious centre, from which 
no ray however feeble shines, we may, in an- 
other age, point our telescopes, detecting, per- 
chance, the great luminary which controls our 

* Etudes d'Astronomie Stellaire, p. 108. 

t Professor Madler, without any very weighty reasons, makes the star 
Alcyone, the brightest of the Pleiades, the centre of the Sun's orbit. 



124 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

system, and bends its path, into that vast orbit 
which man, in the whole cycle of his race, may 
never be allowed to round. If the buried 
relics of primeval life have taught us how brief 
has been our tenure of this terrestrial paradise, 
compared with its occupancy by the brutes that 
perish, the grand sidereal truth which we have 
been expounding impresses upon us the no less 
humbling lesson, that from the birth of man to 
the extinction of his race, the system to which 
he belongs will have described but an infinites- 
imal arc in that grand cosmical orbit in which 
it is destined to revolve. If reason ever falters 
beneath the weight of its conceptions, it is 
under this overwhelming idea of time and of 
space. One round, doubtless of this immea- 
surable path will the Sun be destined to 
describe. How long a journey has it been in 
the past ! How brief in the present ! How 
endless in the future ! 

We have thus endeavored to give our 
readers an accurate idea of the nature and 
grandeur of this great cosmical movement, not 
merely because it will supply us with a new 
argument for a plurality of worlds, but because 



MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 125 

the author of the Essay already quoted, who 
denies this great doctrine, has completely mis- 
represented the great truth of the motion of 
the Solar system. Foreseeing its influence on 
the mind as an argument for more worlds than 
one, he has shunned the description of it even 
as a theory, and represented it to his readers as 
among " the conjectures of astronomers," and 
as founded upon u minute inquiries and bold 
conjectures," which he need not notice, as they 
"have no bearing on his subject."* 

That the sidereal phenomena thus stigmatized 
are not conjectures but truths, admitted by every 
astronomer, our readers have seen. That they 
have a bearing on the doctrine of a plurality 
of worlds we shall endeavor to show. The 
argument for a plurality of worlds may have 
two forms. It may embrace a new point of 
analogy between the inhabited Earth and any 
of the planets, primary or secondary ; and since 
our Solar system is a system containing inhab- 
itants, even if the Earth is the only planet that 
contains them, any point of analogy between 
that system and any other system of stars in 

* Of a Plurality of Worlds, pp. 157, 158. 
11* 



126 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

winch there is a distinct movement of one star 
round another, becomes an argument for the 
existence of inhabitants, or of an inhabited 
planet in the other. It may have also a second 
form, namely, that which is called a reductio 
ad absurdum, that is, an argument in which it 
is shown that the opposite opinion is an absurd- 
ity. The strictest truths in geometry have 
been considered as demonstrated by this species 
of argument, and it is still more applicable in 
the present case, where mathematical certainty 
cannot be reached, because there may be dif- 
ferent degrees of absurdity, and we may have 
an argumentum ad ahsurdiorem, and an argu- 
mentum ad absurdissimum. 

To illustrate this, let us suppose that, at a 
certain period in the history of astronomy, the 
Earth was believed to be the only planet that 
moved round the Sun. The astronomer of that 
day must have thought it strange that a sun 
88,000 miles in diameter should be employed 
to light and to heat a planet only 8,000 miles 
in diameter, as a smaller sun nearer the Earth 
would have been sufficient for the purpose. 
When Venus was discovered and found to be a 



MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 127 

planet of the same size as the Earth, with moun- 
tains and valleys, days and nights, and years 
analogous to our own, astronomers could not 
fail to think it probable that she was inhabited 
like the Earth ; and the absurdity of believing 
that she had no inhabitants, when no other 
rational purpose could be assigned for her crea- 
tion, became an argument of a certain amount 
that she was like the Earth, the seat of animal 
and vegetable life. When Jupiter was dis- 
covered, and was found to be so gigantic a 
planet that it required four moons to give him 
light, the argument from analogy that he was 
inhabited became stronger, from the fact of his 
having moons, and the argument for a plurality 
of worlds became stronger also, because the 
analogy was extended to two planets. In like 
manner, every discovery of a new planet, either 
with new points of analogy, or with those pre- 
viously existing in other planets, became an 
additional argument from analogy ; and when 
the system was completed with Saturn, Uranus, 
Neptune, and their numerous satellites, and 
when astronomers had discovered the existence 
of atmospheres, and clouds, and arctic snows, 



128 MORE WORLDS THAN" ONE. 

and trade winds in Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and 
Venus, the argument from analogy attained a 
degree of force which it had not in the time of 
Fontenelle ; and the absurdity of the opposite 
opinion that planets should have moons and no 
inhabitants, atmospheres with no creatures to 
breathe in them, and currents of air without life 
to be fanned, became a formidable argument 
which few minds, if any, could resist. 

Considering then the Solar system as station- 
ary in space, and unconnected with any other 
system, the argument for the existence of inhab- 
itants on its planets, has a certain fixed value 
compounded of the argument from analogy, and 
the degree of absurdity which attaches to the 
idea of the planets being lumps of moving mat- 
ter shone upon, and shining in vain. But when 
we have proved that this Solar system is revolv- 
ing round some distant centre in an orbit of 
such inconceivable dimensions that millions of 
years might be required to perform one single 
round : — When we consider that this distant 
centre must be a sun, with attendant planets 
like our own, revolving in like manner round 
our sun, or round their common centre of grav- 



M0TI0X OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 129 

ity, the mind rejects, almost with indignation, 
the ignoble sentiment that man is the only 
being that performs this immeasurable journey, 
and that Jupiter, and Saturn, and Uranus, and 
Neptune, with their bright array of regal train- 
bearers, are but colossal blocks of lifeless clay 
encumbering the Earth as a drag, and mocking 
the creative majesty of heaven. 

It is hardly necessary to illustrate these views 
by more familiar similitudes. The architect of 
a solar system stationary in space, and with but 
one of its smallest planets inhabited, may in 
some degree be likened to a sovereign, who, in 
sending a military colony to cultivate and de- 
fend an island in the Pacific, engaged twenty- 
five soldiers, one of whom was a light infantry 
man, who did all the honors and duties of the 
island, while the other twenty-four were tall 
and powerful grenadiers, who enjoyed them- 
selves day and night upon merry-go-rounds, 
heated by genial fires, and lighted by brilliant 
chandeliers of gas, but performing no useful 
work, and doing no honor to their king. The 
Creator of the same solar system launched into 
an orbit of immeasurable circuit, and wheeling 



130 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

through ether with, the velocity of fifty-seven 
miles in a second, may have some resemblance 
to a mighty autocrat, who should establish a 
railway round the coasts of Europe and Asia, 
and place upon it an enormous train of first- 
class carriages, impelled year after year by tre- 
mendous steam power, while there was but a 
philosopher and a culprit in a humble van, at- 
tended by hundreds of unoccupied carriages 
and empty trucks ! 

Since every fixed star, considered as the 
centre of a system, must have planets upon 
which to shine, we are furnished with a new 
argument from analogy, from the fact of our 
Solar system revolving round a similar system 
of planets, for as there is at least one inhabited 
planet in the one system, there must for the 
same reason be one inhabited planet in the 
other, and consequently, there must be more 
inhabited worlds than one — as many indeed as 
there are systems in the universe. This argu- 
ment will be better understood when we have 
treated, in a future chapter, of binary systems 
of stars, to which the Newtonian law of gravity 
has been found applicable. 



CHAPTER VII. 

KELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 

It is as injurious to the interests of religion, 
as it is degrading to those of science, when the 
votaries of either place them in a state of mu- 
tual antagonism. A mere inference or a theory 
in science, however probable, must ever give 
way to a truth revealed ; but a scientific truth 
must be maintained, however contradictory it 
may appear to the most cherished doctrines of 
religion. In freely discussing the subject of a 
plurality of worlds, there can be no collision 
between Reason and Revelation. Christians, 
timid and ill-formed, have, at different per- 
iods, refused to accept of certain results of 
science, which, instead of being adverse to their 
faith, have been its best auxiliaries ; and infidel 
writers, taking advantage of this weakness, 
have vainly arrayed the discoveries and infer- 



132 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE, 

ences of astronomy against the fundamental 
doctrines of Scripture. This unseemly con- 
troversy, which once raged respecting the mo- 
tion of the Earth and the stability of the Sun, 
and more recently in reference to the doctrines 
and theories of geology, terminated, as it always 
must do, in favor of science. Truths physical 
have an origin as divine as truths religious, 
In the time of Galileo they triumphed over the 
casuistry and secular power of the Church ; and 
in our own day the incontrovertible truths of 
primeval life have won as noble a victory over 
the errors of a speculative theology, and a false 
interpretation of the word of God. Science 
ever has been, and ever must be the safeguard 
of religion. The grandeur of her truths may 
transcend our failing reason, but those who 
cherish and lean upon truths equally grand, 
but certainly more incomprehensible, ought to 
see in the marvels of the material world the 
best defence and illustration of the mysteries 
of their faith. 

In referring to the planets of our own system, 
and to those which surround the fixed stars as 
suns, Dr. Bentley justly remarks, " that if any 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 138 

person will indulge himself in this speculation, 
he need not quarrel with revealed religion upon 
such an account. The Holy Scriptures do not 
forbid him to suppose as great a multitude of 
systems, and as much inhabited as he pleases. 
'Tis true there is no mention in Moses's narra- 
tive of the creation of any people in other 
planets. But it plainly appears that the sacred 
historian doth only treat of the origin of ter- 
restrial animals : he hath given us no account 
of God's creating the angels ; and yet the same 
author in the ensuing parts of the Pentateuch, 
makes not unfrequent mention of the angels of 
God. Neither need we be solicitous about the 
conditions of those planetary people, nor raise 
frivolous disputes how far they may participate 
in Adam's fall or in the "benefits of Christ's in- 
carnation. As if because they are supposed to 
be Rational they must needs be concluded to 
be Men." He then goes on to show that there 
maybe " minds of superior or meaner capacities 
than human united to a human body," and 
" minds of human capacities united to a differ- 
ent body" ... . . "so that we ought 
not upon any account to conclude that if there 



134 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

be rational inhabitants in the Moon or Mars, or 
any unknown planets of other systems, they 
must therefore have human natures, or be in- 
volved in the circumstances of our world."* 

The doctrine of a plurality of worlds, — of 
the occupation of the planets and stars by 
animal and intellectual life, has been stated as 
" a popular argument against Christianity not 
much dwelt upon in books, but it it is believed, 
a good deal insinuated in conversation, and 
having no small influence on the amateurs of a 
superficial philosophy."f Although we have 
felt that such a difficulty might be made an 
objection to Christianity, we have neither met 
with it in books nor in conversation ; but as it 
has been so prominently brought into view by 
Dr. Chalmers, and also by the author of the 
Essay Of a Plurality of Worlds, it is necessary 
to ascertain its value, whether it be urged by 
the infidel against the truths of Scripture, or by 
the Christian against the inferences of science. 

"Is it likely," as Dr. Chalmers puts it, " says 
the infidel, that God would send His eternal 

* On the Confutation of Atheism, &c, 3693, pp. 6-8. 
t Chalmers's Discourses, &c. Discourse I. 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 135 

Son to die for the puny occupiers of so insig- 
nificant a province in the mighty field of His 
creation ? Are we the befitting objects of so 
great and so signal an interposition ? Does not 
the largeness of that field which Astronomy 
lays open to the view of modern science, throw 
a suspicion over the truth of gospel history ? 
and how shall we reconcile the greatness of 
that wonderful movement which was made in 
heaven for the redemption of fallen man, with 
the comparative meanness and obscurity of our 
species ?" 

In meeting this astronomical objection, Dr. 
Chalmers states that it consists of an assertion, 
which he denies, that Christianity was estab- 
lished for the exclusive benefit of our minute 
and solitary world, and of an inference or argu- 
ment, that God would not lavish " such a quan- 
tity of attention on so insignificant a field." 
In denying the assertion, and maintaining that 
the inhabitants of other worlds may not have 
required a Saviour, Dr. Chalmers has obviously 
cut the knot of the difficulty rather than untied 
it. The assertion of the infidel, and the asser- 
tion of the divine, mutually destroy each other. 



136 MOKE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

The assertion of the infidel, not his inference, 
has been maintained very generally by Christ- 
ians themselves, and is indeed a difficulty 
which perplexes them. The assertion of the 
divine, on the contrary, is one which very few 
Christians will admit, and one which is opposed 
to the very system of analogy, which guides us 
in proving a plurality of worlds. If we argue 
that Jupiter, a planet with moons, must be in- 
habited because the earth which has a moon is 
inhabited, is not the infidel or the Christian en- 
titled to say, that since the inhabitants of the 
Earth have sinned and required a Saviour, the 
inhabitants of Jupiter must also have sinned, 
and required a Saviour ? To maintain the con- 
trary opinion is not only against analogy, but it 
is a hazardous position for a divine to take when 
he maintains it to be probable that there are 
intellectual creatures occupying a world of mat- 
ter, and subject to material laws, and yet ex- 
empt from sin, and consequently from suffering 
and death. A proposition so extraordinary 
we cannot venture to affirm. If it be true, the 
difficulty of the sceptic and the Christian is at 
once removed, because there can be no need of 



KELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 137 

a Saviour ; and we are driven to the extrava- 
gant conclusion, that the inhabitants of all the 
planets but our own are sinless and immortal 
beings that never broke the Divine law, and are 
enjoying that perfect felicity which is reserved 
only for a few of the less favored occupants of 
the Earth. Thus chained to a planet the lowest 
and most unfortunate in the universe, the phi- 
losopher, with all his analogies broken down, 
may justly renounce his faith in a plurality of 
worlds, and rejoice in the more limited but 
safer creed of the anti-pluralist author who 
makes the Earth the only world in the uni- 
verse, and the special object of God's paternal 
care. 

We must not, however, permit our readers to 
come to such a painful conclusion. Men of 
lofty mincls and of undoubted piety have re- 
garded the existence of moral evil as a part 
— a necessary part, we think, of the general 
scheme of the universe, and consequently as 
affecting all its rational inhabitants — the race 
of Adam on our own globe, and the races, per- 
chance, more glorious than our own in the 
planets around us, and in the remotest system in 
12* 



138 MOKE WOELDS THAN" ONE. 

space. When on tlie eye of learning the truth 
of his opinion, the illustrious Huygens did not 
hesitate to affirm, that it would be absurd to 
suppose that all things were made otherwise 
than God willed, and knew would happen ; and 
that if we had lived in continual peace, and 
with an abundant supply of all the good things 
of this life, there would have been neither art 
nor science, and the human race would soon 
have lived like the brutes that perish. And 
with these views he comes to the conclusion, 
that the inhabitants of the other planets must 
be endowed with the same vices and virtues as 
man, because without such vices and virtues 
they would be far more degraded than the oc« 
cupants of the Earth. 

One of the most profound thinkers and ele- 
gant writers of the present day* has viewed this 
subject from a loftier eminence. " From the 
revealed record," he says, " we learn that the 
dynasty of man in the mixed state and character, 
is not the final one, but that there is to be yet 
another creation, or more properly re-creation, 
known theologically as the resurrection, which 

Mr. Hugh Miller, Footprints of the Creator, pp. 301-303. 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 139 

shall be connected in its physical components by- 
bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty 
which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally 
by the chain of identity, conscious and actual; 
but which in all that constitutes superiority, 
shall be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of 
responsible man is superior to even the lowest 
of the preliminary dynasties. We are farther 
taught, that at the commencement of this last 
of the dynasties, there will be a re-creation, of 
not only elevated, but also of degraded beings 
— a recreation of the lost We are taught yet 
farther, that though the present dynasty be that 
of a lapsed race, which at their first introduction 
were placed on higher ground than that on which 
they now stand, and sank by their own act, it 
was yet part of the original design, from the 
beginning of all things, that they should occupy 
the existing platform ; and that redemption is 
thus no after- thought, rendered necessary by the 
fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general 
scheme, for which provision has been made from 
the beginning ; so that the divine man, through 
whom the work of restoration has been effected, 
was in reality, in reference to the purposes of 



140 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

the Eternal, what He is designated in the re- 
markable text, ' The Lamb slain from the foun- 
dations of the world. 1 Slain from the founda- 
tions of the world ! Could the assertors of the 
stony science ask for language more express ? 
By piecing the two records together — that re- 
vealed in Scripture, and that revealed in the 
rocks — records which, however widely geolo- 
gists may mistake the one, or commentators 
misunderstand the other, have emanated from 
the same great author, we learn that in slow 
and solemn majesty has period succeeded period, 
each in succession ushering in a higher and yet 
higher scene of existence — that fish, reptiles, 
mammiferous quadrupeds, have reigned in turn, 
— that responsible man, 'made in the image 
of God,' and with dominion over all creatures, 
ultimately entered into a world ripened for his 
reception ; but further, that this passing scene, 
in which he forms the prominent figure, is not 
the final one in the long series, but merely the 
last of the preliminary scenes ; and that that 
period to which the bygone ages, incalculable in 
amount, with all their well-proportioned grada- 
tions of being, form the imposing vestibule ; shall 



EELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 141 

have perfection for its occupant, and eternity 
for its duration. I know not how it may appear 
to others ; but for my own part, I cannot avoid 
thinking that there would be a lack of propor- 
tion in the series of being, were the period of 
perfect and glorified humanity abruptly con- 
nected, without the introduction of an intermediate 
creation of responsible imperfection, with that -of 
the dying, irresponsible brute. That scene of 
things in which God became man, and suffered, 
seems, as it no doubt is, a necessary link in the 
chain.' 7 

At this startling result, our author finds him- 
self on the confines of a mystery which man has 
" vainly aspired to comprehend." "I have," 
says he, "no new reading of the enigma to offer. 
I know not why it is that moral evil exists in 
the universe of the All- wise and the All-power- 
ful ; nor through what occult law of Deity it is 
that ' perfection should come through suffer- 
ing/ " In the darkness of this mystery the best 
and the brightest spirits are involved ; and our 
inability to fathom its depth we willingly ac- 
knowledge. But there are difficulties, which 
though we cannot solve them for others, we 



142 MOEE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

may solve for ourselves. An inferior intellect 
may disencumber itself of an incubus, which, a 
superior one may be doomed forever to bear. 
And as the physician, when he cannot achieve 
a cure, considers himself fortunate when he 
finds an anodyne, so the Spectre of Moral Evil 
may haunt the philosopher when the peasant 
has succeeded in exorcising it. 

To exhibit the Divine attributes, and to dis- 
play the Divine glory to an intellectual and 
immortal race, must have been the purpose for 
which a material universe was created. In his 
physical frame Man is necessarily subject to 
physical laws. The law of gravity " cannot 
cease as he goes by;" — and finite in his nature, 
and fallible in his reason, he can but feebly de- 
fend himself against the ferocity of animal life, 
the power of the elements, or the poison that 
may mingle in his cup. His high reason does 
not, in many emergencies, compensate for his 
inferior instinct. He is therefore helplessly ex- 
posed to suffering and death. The instincts of 
self-preservation and of parental affection give 
a magnitude and interest to whatever affects the 
safety and happiness of himself and his offspring. 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 148 

He is thus placed in antagonism to his fellow- 
sufferers, and in the collision of interests and 
feelings, laws human and Divine are broken. 
Nor is this result less conformable to what we 
have regarded as the object and end of creation. 
In order to glorify God by a knowledge of His 
attributes, these attributes must be fully dis- 
played. The power, and wisdom, and goodness 
of the Creator, are exhibited to us every day and 
every hour ; — they are proclaimed in the heav- 
ens ; — they are stamped on the earth ; — life, 
and the enjoyments of life, display them even to 
the dumb, the deaf, and the blind. But in what 
region are we to descry the attributes of mercy, 
of justice, and of truth ? In the abodes of 
happiness and peace, the idea of Mercy can 
neither have an object nor a name. Justice can 
be understood only among the unjust, — and 
Truth only among the untruthful. The moral 
attributes of the most High can be comprehended 
and emblazoned only among the cruel, the dis- 
honest and the false. His power, wisdom, and 
goodness, can be exhibited only in a material 
world, governed by the laws of matter ; and man 
in his material nature must be subject to their 



144 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

operation and control. Though thus controlled 
and thus suffering, we feel that all is good and 
wise, and under this feeble gleam of reason there 
is light enough to show us — if we are disposed 
to have it shown — that the Spectre of Moral 
Evil has been conjured up by ourselves : 

All discord, harmony not understood : 
All partial evil, universal good — Pope. 

If we reject, then, the idea that the inhabit- 
ants of the planets do not require a Saviour, 
and maintain the more rational opinion, that 
they stand in the same moral relation to their 
Maker as the inhabitants of the Earth, we must 
seek for another solution of the difficulty which 
has embarrassed both the infidel and the Chris- 
tian. How can we believe, says the timid 
Christian, that there can be inhabitants in the 
planets, when God had but one Son whom He 
could send to save them ? If we can give a 
satisfactory answer to this question, it may 
destroy the objections of the infidel, while it 
relieves the Christian from his anxieties. 

When, at the commencement of our era, the 
great sacrifice was made at Jerusalem, it was 



RELIGIOUS . DIFFICULTIES. 145 

by the crucifixion of a man, or an angel, or a 
God. If our faith be that of the Arian or the 
Socinian, the sceptical and the religious diffi- 
culty is at once removed :— a man or an angel 
may be again provided as a ransom for the 
inhabitants of the planets. But if we believe, 
with the Christian Church, that the Son of Grod 
was required for the expiation of sin, the dif- 
ficulty presents itself in its most formidable 
shape. 

When our Saviour died, the influence of His 
death extended backwards, in the past, to mill- 
ions who never heard His name, and forw ards, 
in the future, to millions who will never hear it. 
Though it radiated but from the Holy City, it 
reached to the remotest lands, and affected 
every living race in the old and the new world. 
Distance in time and distance in place did not 
diminish its healing virtue. 

" Though curious to compute, 
" Archangels failed to cast the mighty sum." 

" Ungrasped by minds create," it was a force 

which did not vary with any function of the 

distance. All-powerful over the thief on the 

cross, in contact with its divine source, it was in 

13 



146 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

succeeding ages equally powerful over the Eed 
Indian of the west, and the wild Arab of the 
east. Their heavenly Father, by some process of 
mercy which we understand not, communicated 
to them its saving power. Emanating from the 
middle planet of the system, why may it not 
have extended to them all — to the planetary 
races in the past, when " the day of their re- 
demption had drawn nigh ;" and to the planet- 
ary races in the future, when " their fulness of 
time shall come" ? 

" When stars and suns are dust beneath his throne, 
A thousand worlds so bought were bought too dear " 

But to bring our argument more within the 
reach of an ordinary understanding, let us 
suppose that our globe at the beginning of the 
Christian era had been broken in two, as the 
comet of Biela is supposed to have been in 1846, 
and that its two halves, the old world and the 
new, travelled together like a double star, or 
diverged into widely -separated orbits. Would 
not both its fragments have shared in the 
beneficence of the cross, — the old world as 
liberally as the new, — the penitent on the 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES 147 

shores of the Mississippi, as richly as the 
pilgrim on the banks of the Jordan. If the 
rays, then, "of the Sun of righteousness, with 
healing on His wings," could have shot across 
the void between our European and American 
worlds thus physically dissevered, may not all/ 
the planets, the worlds made by our Savioiu 
himself, formed out of the same materiel 
element, and basking under the same benefi- 
cent sun, be equal participators in H;-s heavenly 
gift? 

Should this view of the subject prove unsat- 
isfactory to the anxious inquirer, we may 
suggest for his consideration another sentiment, 
even though we ourselves may not admit it into 
our creed. If one man can expiate the crime 
of another by a punishment short of death, he 
may perform the same generous deed for a 
thousand. Should such a noble martyr consent 
even to give his life for his friend, by suffering 
a death from which science could revive him, 
he might expiate the crimes of thousands of 
his race. May not the Divine nature, which 
can neither suffer nor die, and which in our 
planet, once only, clothed itself in humanity, 



148 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

resume elsewhere a physical form, and expiate 
the guilt of unnumbered worlds ? 

In his zeal to overthrow the objection of the 
infidel. Dr. Chalmers has, we think, subjected 
it to a species of unnecessary torture. When 
the infidel thinks it unlikely "that God would 
send His eternal Son to die for the puny occu- 
pants of so insignificant a province of His 
creation," he does not mean that God cannot 
and does- not take care " of the insignificant 
province" of t?e earth, because He has so many 
other nobler phpetary kingdoms to govern. 
He means only that the mission of God's own 
eternal Son was too great a gift to the earth, 
and therefore one not likely to be given. The 
objection, indeed, which Dr. Chalmers puts into 
the mouth of the infidel is, in truth, an objection 
felt by the Christian ; and the acute author of 
the Essay Of a Plurality of Worlds, seeing this 
mistake, actually treats it "not as an objection 
urged by an opponent of religion, but rather 
as a difficulty felt by a friend of religion." He 
considers it as a difficulty bearing on natural 
religion, and in this aspect he accepts of it as a 
difficulty, discusses its importance, and regards 



RELIGIOUS. DIFFICULTIES. 149 

Dr. Chalmer's reply to it as "well fitted to 
remove the scruples to which it is especially 
addressed." The difficulty is thus put by the 
anonymous author we have referred to : — - 

" Among the thoughts which it was stated 
naturally arose in men's minds when the tele- 
scope revealed to them an innumerable multi- 
tude of worlds besides the one we inhabit was 
this; — that the Governor of the Universe, who 
has so many ivorlds under His management, 
cannot he conceived as bestowing upon this 
earth, and its various tribes of inhabitants, 
that care which, till then, natural religion had 
taught men that He does employ to secure to 
man the possession and use of his faculties of 
mind and body, and to all animals the requi- 
sites of animal existence and animal enjoyment. 
And upon this Chalmers remarks, that just 
about the time when science gave rise to the 
suggestion of this difficulty, she also gave 
occasion to a remarkable reply to it. Just 
about the same time that the invention of the 
telescope showed that there were innumerable 
worlds which might have inhabitants requiring 
the Creator's care as much as the tribes of this 
13* 



150 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

earth do, the invention of the microscope 
showed that there were in this world innumer- 
able tribes of animals which had been all along 
enjoying the benefit of the Creator's care as 
much as those kinds with which man had been 
familiar from the beginning. The telescope 
suggested that there might be dwellers in 
Jupiter or in Saturn, of great size and unknown 
structure, who must share with us the preserv- 
ing care of God. The microscope showed that 
there had been close to us, inhabiting minute 
crevices and crannies, peopling the leaves of 
plants and the bodies of other animals, animal- 
cules of a minuteness hitherto unguessed, and 
of a structure hitherto unknown, who had been 
aly/ays sharers with us in God's preserving care. 
The telescope brought into view worlds as 
numerous as the drops of water which make up 
the ocean ; the microscope brought into view 
a world in every drop of water. Infinity in 
one direction was balanced by infinity in the 
other. The doubts which man might feel as 
to what God would do, were balanced by cer- 
tainties which they discovered as to what He 
had always been doing. His care and good- 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 151 

ness could not be supposed to be exhausted by 
the hitherto known population of the Earth, 
for it was proved they had hitherto been con- 
fined to that population. The discovery of 
new worlds at vast distances from us was 
accompanied by the discovery of new worlds 
close to us, even in the very substances with 
which we were best acquainted, and was thus 
rendered ineffective to disturb the belief of those 
who had regarded the world as having God for its 
Governor. 

The difficulties, or "scruples," so distinctly 
stated in the preceding extract, whether we 
view them as an objection urged by an oppo- 
nent of religion, as Dr. Chalmers does, or as a 
difficulty felt by the Christian, have, in our 
opinion, no existence ; and, if they had, we con* 
sider the discoveries of the microscope as having 
no tendency whatever to remove them. It is a 
singular doctrine to maintain, that " the truths 
of natural religion " were ever exposed to danger 
by the discoveries of the telescope, or that astro- 
nomical truth ever excited the " doubts or diffi- 
culties," stated by our author, either in the minds 
of Theists or Christians of the most ordinary 



152 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE, 

capacity. We have never read any works con- 
taining such, doubts, nor listened to any conver- 
sations in which they were the subject of dis- 
cussion. Amid the destructive convulsions of 
the physical world, even pious minds may have 
for an instant questioned the superintending 
providence of God. In the midst of famine, or 
pestilence, or war, they may have stood horror- 
struck at the scene. In the triumphs of fraud, 
oppression, and injustice, over honesty, and 
liberty, and law, Faith may have wavered, and 
Hope despaired ; but in no condition, either of 
the physical or the moral world, does the mind 
question the Power of its Maker. The omnip- 
otence of the Creator, and the exertion of it in 
every corner of space, — His care over the falling 
sparrow, and His guidance of the gigantic planet, 
are the earliest of our acquired truths, and the 
very first that observation and experience con- 
firm. When Eeason gives wisdom to our per- 
ceptions, omnipotence is the grand truth which 
they inculcate. Whatever the eye sees, or the 
ear hears, or the fingers touch, — every motion 
of our body, every function it performs, every 
structure in its fabric, impresses on the mind, 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 153 

and fixes in the heart the conviction, that the 
Creator is all-powerful as well as all- wise. Om- 
nipotence, in short, is the only attribute of God 
which is universally appreciated, which scepti- 
cism never unsettles, and which we believe as 
firmly when under the influence of our corrupt 
passions, as when we are looking devoutly to 
heaven. All the other attributes of Grod are 
inferences. His omnipresence, His omniscience, 
His justice, mercy, and truth, are the deductions 
of reason, and, however true and demonstrable, 
they exercise little influence over the mind; 
but the attribute of omnipotence predominates 
over them all, and no mind responsive to its 
power will ever be disturbed by the ideas which 
it suggests of infinity of time, infinity of space, 
and infinity of life. 

Is it conceivable that a Theist or a Christian 
of the smallest mental capacity could suppose 
that there are degrees of omnipotence, and imag- 
ine that the Almighty might be prevented, by 
the many worlds under His management, from 
taking care of the Earth and its inhabitants ? 
If that Being who has made the living world 
which we see, can make millions of worlds, the 



154 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

same power which takes such care of its in- 
habitants that not a hair of their head can fall 
to the ground without His knowledge, can 
equally embrace in his capacious affections, 
and clasp in " the everlasting arms," all the 
families of the universe. 

But even if we admit that such imperfect 
notions of omnipotence have been entertained, 
we deny that the discoveries of the microscope 
have the slightest tendency to correct them. 
Without alleging, as we might well do, that 
minds cherishing such notions of the Deity are 
incapable of appreciating the great truths, that 
there are "new worlds close to us;" that there 
is "a world in every drop of water;" and that 
"these worlds are as numerous as the drops 
in the ocean," we maintain that minds of the 
highest cast view the microscopic w r orlds as 
creations of an entirely different order from 
those disclosed by the telescope, and that such 
minds can never reason from animalcular to 
intellectual life. We admit, that the very same 
care which is required to preserve even an atom 
of invisible life, is necessary to maintain the 
gigantic forms of the elephant or the mammoth; 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 155 

but ordinary minds, and those who think that 
their Maker may have too much to do ) cannot 
comprehend, and therefore cannot receive, the 
doctrine that God takes care of mites and mos- 
quitoes, and the other denizens of the microcosm 
at their feet, — of animalcules which they swal- 
low in myriads at every act of deglutition, — 
which they suffocate in millions by every breath 
they draw, — and which, at every step, they 
trample relentlessly under their feet. 

The religious difficulty has been presented in 
another form by the author of the Essay Of a 
Plurality of Worlds, but in a form so unintelli- 
gible to us, that we feel the greatest difficulty 
in comprehending it. Considering Man as an 
intellectual, moral, and religious creature, and 
having a progressive history in the development 
of these different conditions or privileges, as our 
author calls them, he sees a great difficulty in 
supposing that intellectual and responsible crea- 
tures analogous to man, can have a place in any 
of the other planets of our system. Viewing, 
he says, " the mode of existence of human spe- 
cies upon the earth as being a progressive exist- 
ence, even in the intellectual powers and their 



156 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE, 

results, necessarily fastens down our thoughts 
and our speculations to the earth, and makes us 
feel how visionary and gratuitous it is to assume 
any similar hind of existence in any region 
occupied by other beings than men;" and he 
elsewhere asserts " that if we will people other 
planets with creatures intelligent as man is in- 
telligent, we must not only give to them the 
intelligence, but the intellectual history of the 
human species." This assertion is supported by 
another assertion, " that the Earth and its hu- 
man inhabitants are ? as far as we yet know, in 
an especial manner the subject of God's care 
and government ;" and from these and other as- 
sertionSy in reference to man being under the 
moral government of God, and to the Earth 
being the theatre of the scheme of redemption^ 
he comes to the incomprehensible conclusion, 
that man r s nature and place is unique, and in- 
capable of repetition in the scheme of the uni- 
verse f 

In order to test the accuracy of these asser- 
tions, and to discover what bearing they have 
upon the doctrine of a plurality of worlds, we 
must ascertain what has been, and what now is, 



KELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 157 

the progressive history of man, as an intellec- 
tual, moral, and religions creature ; and in what 
age, and in what regions of the globe it has 
presented, or does now present, that unity of 
character and position vjhich is incapable of 
repetition in the scheme of the universe. 

The history of the human species is the his- 
tory of a variety of races in every stage of civili- 
zation and barbarism, and the great majority of 
which have neither an intellectual, nor a moral, 
nor a religious progressive history. Progression 
has not been the character of the history of man. 
Without alluding to his primeval fall from his 
high estate, we have only to cast our eyes over 
the globe, and look at the intellectual, moral, 
and religious catastrophes which it presents to 
us, — -at ages of light and darkness,- — at alterna- 
tions of progress and decline, — at the highest 
civilization sinking into the lowest barbarism. 
Mark those eastern lands, now involved in dark- 
ness, from which the beams of knowledge first 
radiated on mankind. Study the extinction of 
morality in many regions of the earth where its 
great lessons were first taught by our Saviour 
and His apostles ; and above all, mark the total 
14 



158 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

suppression of the Christian faith in European 
communities, where it has been displaced by a 
religion whose doctrines were preached by con- 
quest, and whose decalogue was dictated by the 
sword. 

May we not ask, then, which of these ever- 
changing conditions of humanity is that unique 
condition which cannot be repeated in the 
scheme of the universe? If it is the intellec- 
tual, moral, and religious race which is typified 
by Newton, and Shakspeare, and Milton, why 
may it not be the lowest in the scale of existence 
in some glorious planet, where the understand- 
ing, and the affections, and the imagination are 
to rise into higher forms of science, of poetry, 
and of philanthropy ? Why may not the red 
Indian, the black negro, and the white slave, be 
the condition of intelligence in another sphere, 
— to be elevated to a nobler type of reason, and 
to a happier and a holier lot ? And why may 
there not be an intermediate race between that 
of man and the angelic beings of Scripture, 
where human reason shall pass into the highest 
form of created mind, and human affections 
into their noblest development ? 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 159 

It is strange, and hardly credible, that the 
writer whose opinion we are considering, should 
think it necessary that the planets, if inhabited, 
should be occupied by anything like man. 
Huygens, and Bentley, and Isaac Taylor, and 
Sir H. Davy, and Chalmers, have taken a dif- 
ferent and a sounder view of the subject. The 
diversity in the races of man, — the immense and 
beautiful variety of forms and natures in the 
world of instinct, — and the countless beauties 
and differences in the structures and properties 
of vegetable and mineral bodies, whether of the 
ancient or the present earth, all concur in satis- 
fying us that there will be the same diversity 
in the occupants and in the productions of the 
planetary regions. — Why may not the intelli- 
gence of the spheres be ordained for the study 
of regions and objects, unstudied and unknown 
on earth ? Why may not labor have a better 
commission than to earn its bread by the sweat 
of its brow ? Why may it not pluck its loaf from 
the bread-fruit tree, or gather its manna from 
the ground, or draw its wine from the bleeding 
vessels of the vine, or inhale its anodyne breath 
from the paradise gas of its atmosphere ? 



160 MORE .WORLDS THAN ONE. 

But whatever races be in the celestial spheres, 
we feel sure that there must be one, among 
whom there are no man-eaters — no parent slay- 
ers — no widow burners— no infant killers — no 
heroes with red hands — no sovereigns with 
bloody hearts — and no statesmen who, by leav- 
ing the people untaught, educate them for the 
scaffold In the decalogue of that community 
will stand pre-eminent, in letters of burnished 
gold, the highest of all social obligations, — 

THOU SHALT NOT KILL, 

—neither for territory, for fame, for lucre, nor 
for crime,— -neither for food, nor for raiment, 
nor for pleasure. The lovely forms of life, and 
sensation, and instinct, so delicately fashioned 
by the master hand, shall no longer be destroy- 
ed and trodden under foot, but be objects of 
unceasing love and admiration,- — the study of 
the philosopher, the theme of the poet, and the 
auxiliaries and companions of man. 

The difficulties we have been considering, in 
so far as they are of a religious character, have 
been very unwisely introduced into the question 
of a plurality of worlds. We are not entitled 



RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 161 

to remonstrate with the sceptic, but we venture 
to doubt the soundness of that philosopher's 
judgment, who thinks that the truths of natu- 
ral religion are affected by a belief in planetary 
races, and the reality of that Christian's faith 
who considers it to be endangered by a belief 
that there are other worlds than his own. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SINGLE STAES AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 

If we suppose ourselves placed successively 
on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Nep- 
tune, the Sun will successively appear smaller 
and smaller, and at Neptune it will still have 
a round and distinctly defined disc. At greater 
distances beyond our system the disc of the 
Sun would be seen only through a telescope, 
and all the planets, except Jupiter and Saturn, 
will have disappeared. At a greater distance 
still, they will vanish in succession, and before 
we cross the immense void which lies between 
our system and the nearest system of the stars, 
our Sun will be seen as a single star twinkling 
in the sky. All his planets, primary and sec- 
ondary, and all his comets, will have disappear- 
ed in the distance. 

Hence we are led to believe that the fixed 



SINGLE STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 163 

stars are the suns of other systems, whose plan- 
ets are invisible from their distance. As no 
change of place has been observed in single 
fixed stars, excepting that which is common to 
them all, and arises from the motion of our 
system, we are entitled to consider these single 
stars as the centres of systems like our own ; 
to suppose them without planets, and to be 
merely globes of light and heat, would be con- 
trary to analogy as well as to reason. We 
know that there is one star in the universe sur- 
rounded by planets, and one of these planets 
inhabited ; and when we see another single star 
equal, if not greater in brilliancy, we are enti- 
tled to regard it as the centre of a system, and 
that system with at least one inhabited planet. 
This conclusion is rendered more probable by 
estimates which have been made of the com- 
parative brightness and probable magnitude of 
some of the single fixed stars.* 

* With the view of showing that analogy does not lead us to believe that 
stars, considered as suns, are not surrounded with planets, the author of 
the Essay Of a Plurality of Worlds, has, in a note, quoted in the follow- 
ing manner, a passage from Humboldt, as confirming his opinion : 

" Humboldt," says he, "regards the force of analogy as tending in the 
opposite direction. 'After all,' he asks {Cosmos III. 373,) ' is the as- 
sumption of satellites to be fixed stars so absolutely necessary ? If we 
were to begin from the outer planets, Jupiter, &c, analogy might seem 



164 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

These estimates have been obtained from 
measures of the brightness and distance of a 
small number of stars. The distance of a star is 
obtained from what is called its Parallax,' — ■ 
namely, its change of place in the heavens 
when seen from the two most distant points of 
the earth's orbit, or, what is the same thing, 
the angle subtended at the star by lines drawn 
from it to the two most distant points of the 
earth's orbit, which are separated by a length 
of 190 millions of miles. The following are 
almost the only correct measures of parallax 
which have been obtained by the fine instru- 
ments, and the accurate observations of modern 
astronomers. 

to require that all planets have satellites. But yet this is not true, for 
Mars, Venus, and Mercury, have no satellites,to which we may further add 
the twenty-three planetoids. In this case there is a much greater number 
of bodies which have not satellites than which have them."— P. 1(32, note. 
There is certainly some singular confusion of ideas either in Humboldt 
or his commentator, or in both. Nobody ever maintained that the stars 
have satellites. They are supposed only to have planets, and if any person 
should maintain that these primary planets have satellites, the observa- 
tion of Humboldt would be quite applicable, because analogy tells us 
that it is as likely that they have no satellites as that they have them, or 
rather, as in the Solar system,that some may have satellites,and others not. 
The author of the Essay, however, means by satellites not moons, but 
primary planets, and he has certainly made an extraordinary blunder when 
he infers that there may be no planets round the star suns, because there 
are planets without satellites. If there had not been ia the Solar system 
a single satellite, analogy could never have led us to conclude that there 
were no primary planets round the stars. 



SINGLE STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 165 



a Centauri, . 


//# 913 Henderson and Maclean 


61 Cygni, . 


0"-374 Besel. 


a Lyrse, 


&'%)>! Peters. 


Sirius, 


0"-230 Henderson. 


Arcturus, 


. ' 0"-127 Peters. 


Pole Star, . 


0"-106 Peters. 


Capella, 


0"'O46 Peters. 



The star a Centauri, which, is the nearest to 
our system, has been found to be about two- 
and-a-half times brighter than our Sun, and 
the star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, 
has been found to be four times brighter than 
a Centauri ; but the distance of Sirius is four 
times greater than that of a Centauri, and 
therefore the intrinsic brightness of Sirius is 
sixty -three times greater than that of our Sun. 
A luminary like this, so resplendent in its 
brightness, and so gigantic, doubtless, in its 
magnitude, was surely not planted in space to 
shed its light and its heat upon nothing. The 
star Capella, too, a star of the first magnitude, 
is twenty times more remote than a Centauri, 
and must, like Sirius, be a sun of enormous 
size. Can we doubt, then, that every single 
star, shining by its own native light, is the 
centre of a planetary system like our own, 



166 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

the lamp that lights, the stove that heats, and 
the power that guides in their orbits inhabited 
worlds like our own ? 

A great number of the fixed stars, some of 
which are of the first magnitude, like Castor, 
have been found, by the fine telescopes of 
modern times, to be double, and, from observa- 
tions made at different dates, one of the stars 
has been found to revolve round the other, 
and to form what is called a Binary System ; 
— that is, a system in which one sun with its 
system of planets revolves round another sun 
with its system of planets, or rather round the 
centre of gravity of both. The two suns of 
course are only seen, owing to the great dis- 
tance of their respective systems from us ; but 
no person can believe that two suns could be 
placed in the heavens for no other purpose than 
to revolve round their common centre of gravity. 

The orbits of no fewer than thirteen double 
stars, or binary systems, first discovered by Sir 
William Herschel, have been calculated by Sir 
John Herschel, Savary, Madler, Captain Smyth, 
Hind, Encke, and Jacob, and there can be no 
doubt that the Newtonian law of gravity 



SINGLE STAKS AND BINAEY SYSTEMS. 167 

extends to those bodies. The periods of these 
systems extend from 31| years, which is that 
of £ Herculzs, to 737 years, which is that of 
v Coronas B, both of which were calculated by 
Madler ; but the most interesting is 7 Virginis, 
whose revolution, as computed by Sir John 
Herschel, is 182 years. This system is a very 
interesting one. The two stars which compose 
it are nearly equal, and, according to Struve, 
slightly variable, the two being sometimes equal 
in brightness, and sometimes unequal. Dr. 
Bradley had observed, in 1718, the apparent di- 
rection of the line joining the two stars. In 
1780,Sir William Herschel observed the distance 
of the two stars to be 5""7, which regularly di- 
minished till 1836, when the two appeared per- 
fectly round, like a star single when seen by the 
finest telescopes. After 1836 the stars separated, 
and their distance is now more than 2". The 
change in their angular motion, that is, in the 
direction of the line joining them, has been 
equally remarkable, and was as follows : — 



1783, 


\° per annum 


1830, 


5° 


1834, 


. 20 Q 


1835, 


. 40° 


1836, 


. 10* 



168 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

The star of the shortest period, namely, 
£ Herculis, has performed two revolutions since 
it was first discovered, and the small star has 
been twice completely eclipsed by the large one. 
Other three double stars y Coronce, t Cancri, 
and f Ursce Majoris, have performed more 
than one complete revolution in their orbits, 
and there can be no doubt that these motions 
are the result of centripetal forces varying 
inversely as the square of the distance. " We 
have the same evidence, indeed," says Sir John 
Herschel, "of their motions about each other 
that we have of those of Uranus and Neptune 
about the Sun ; and the correspondence of their 
calculated and observed places in such very 
elongated ellipses must be admitted to carry 
with it proof of the prevalence of the New- 
tonian law of gravity in their systems, of the 
very same nature and agency as that of the 
calculated and observed places of comets round 
the central body of our own." 

In reference to systems like these, the argu- 
ment in favor of their being surrounded with 
inhabited -."planets, is stronger than in the case 
of single systems. We have in this case a 



SINGLE STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 169 

decided visible movement of one of the stars 
round the other : We have also elliptical orbits 
described by the same law of force which 
guides our own Earth and the other planets 
in the Solar system ; and though, upon the 
same principles which led us to agree with Sir 
William Ilerschel.in thinking that our own 
Sun may be inhabited, we may believe the two 
suns of binary systems to be inhabited, yet it is 
more reasonable and consistent with analogy 
to believe that each of them is accompanied, as 
Sir John Herschel remarks, " with its train of 
planets and their satellites, closely shrouded 
from our view by the splendor of their respect- 
ive suns, and crowded into a space bearing 
hardly a greater proportion to the enormous 
interval which separates them than the dis- 
tances of the satellites of our planets from their 
primaries bear to their distances from the Sun 
himself. A less distinctly characterized sub- 
ordination would be incompatible with the 
stability of their systems, and with the plan- 
etaiy nature of their orbits. Unless closely 
nestled under the protecting wing of their 
immediate superior, the sweep of their other 



170 MOEE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

sun, in its perihelion passage round their own, 
might carry them off, or whirl them into 
orbits utterly incompatible with the conditions 
necessary for the existence of their inhabit- 
ants."* 

From the motion of our own system round a 
distant centre, it is highly probable that our 
sun is one of a binary system, although its 
partner has not been discovered. If Madler's 
speculation is correct, our sun and the star 
Alcyone form a binary system, and therefore 
since our sun is attended with planets, and one 
of these inhabited, we are entitled by analogy 
to conclude that all other binary systems have 
planets at least round one of their suns, and 
that one of these planets is the seat of vegetable 
and animal life. 

The number of double stars is very great, 
and also of multiple stars, and groups and 
clusters ; but ages must elapse before astrono- 
mers can determine the relation in which the 
stars that compose each system or group are 
related to one another. In the meantime we 
are compelled to draw the conclusion, that 

* Outlines of Astronomy, § 846. 



SINGLE STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 171 

wherever there is a sun, a gigantic sphere, shin- 
ing by its own light, and either fixed or move- 
able in space, there must be a planetary system, 
and wherever there is a planetary system, there 
must be life and intelligence. 

The number of fixed stars, though greater 
than the atoms of sand on the sea shore, forms 
no argument to the instructed mind against 
their being occupied by living beings, When\ > 
the philosopher, with his microscope, discovered \ 
that the polieschiefer of Bohemia, and chalk 
and solid marble, consisted almost wholly of 
the remains of animal life, the world stood 
aghast at the intelligence : — They were still 
more astonished at the statement that many 
thousands of millions of such infusorial animals 
could be counted in a cubic inch of their life- 
less remains ; but their faith was more severely 
taxed when they learned that whole strata and 
hills were formed of these fossil skeletons.* In 
like manner we are at first startled with the 
deduction that the planets of our own system^/ 

* Ehrenberg found that one cubic inch of the Bilin polieschiefer slate \ 
contains 41,000 millions of these microscopic infusorial animals, called I 
Galionella distans, and that a cubic inch of the same material contains / 
above one billion 750,000 millions of distinct individuals of GalionellaJ 
fcrrvginea. 



172 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

are the seats of intellectual life. We marvel 
still more at the announcement that the systems 
of the stars are planetary, and inhabited like 
our own ; and our faltering reason utterly fails 
us when called upon to believe that even the 
nebulas must be surrendered to life and reason. 
Wherever there is matter there must be Life ; 
Life Physical to enjoy its beauties — Life Moral 
to worship its Maker, and Life Intellectual to 
proclaim His wisdom and His power. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULA. 

Among the bodies of the sidereal universe, 
astronomers have from the earliest ages recog- 
nized the existence of clusters of stars and of 
nebulce. The Milky Way indicates by its name 
that it is of a nebular character ; but a nebula, 
properly so called, is a limited space of light, of 
various forms and various degrees of brightness 
in its different parts. Sir William Herschel 
was the first astronomer y/ho observed this class 
of phenomena systematically, and who divided 
the bodies which compose it into six classes,* 
namely, 

1. Clusters of Stars, in which each star is 
distinctly seen. 

2. Resolvable Nebulae, or such as excite a 

* We omit the other three classes of planetary nebulae, stellar nebulas, 
and nebular stars, as unconnected with our subject. 

15* 



174 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

suspicion that they consist of stars, and which 
a higher magnifying power may be expected to 
resolve into separate stars. 

8. Nebulas, properly so called, in which there 
is no appearance whatever of stars. 

It is very obvious that the language used in 
the above classification, is intended to support 
the theory that there is such a thing in the 
sidereal space as real nebulous matter, or star 
dust, as it has been almost jocularly called, con- 
tradistinguished from a nebulous mass of iden- 
tically the same appearance which the telescope 
has resolved into separate stars. The phrases 
which we have put in italics are certainly 
incorrect, because any appearance, or any ex- 
pectation of a nebula not being resolvable, 
is proved to have been erroneous the moment 
it is resolved. The classification of nebula, 
therefore, should have been, 1. Nebulse that 
the telescope had resolved; and, 2. Nebulae 
that the telescope had not resolved. 

Sir William Herschel believed in the exist- 
ence of purely nebulous matter, or star dust, 
and what has been called the theory of side- 
real aggregation ; and since his time it has 



CLUSTEKS OF STABS AND NEBULA. 175 

been made the basis of wild and extravagant 
speculations equally incompatible with physical 
and revealed truth. It is, therefore, of some 
importance that we should succeed in convinc- 
ing the reader that the existence of nebulae not 
yet resolved, is no proof of the existence of star 
dust, and that we are entitled to conclude that 
such nebulas are clusters of stars, — that each 
star is the sun of a planetary system, and each 
planet the residence of life and reason. Each 
nebula, in short, corresponds with our hill of 
microscopic infusorial animals, — each system 
with a cubic inch of its materials, and each 
planet with a cubic line. If we have seen with 
our own eyes in the microscope the individual 
animal — only the ten thousandth part of an inch 
in size, and if we have seen the hill which is 
an accumulation of them, need we wonder at 
nebulas being stars, — at stars being suns, — and 
planets being inhabited ? 

As it is now an astronomical fact that nebulae, 
which Sir William Herschel, with his finest 
telescopes, could not resolve, and which had no 
appearance whatever of being resolvable, have 
been resolved into distinct stars by the magni- 



/ 



176 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE, 

ficent reflectors of Lord Eosse, we are enabled 
without any hypothetical statements to place 
the question of the existence of star dust or 
purely nebulous matter, in its proper aspect ; — • 
that is, we can assign a satisfactory reason to 
the reader for considering every nebula in the 
heavens as a cluster of stars which is likely to 
be resolved by telescopes superior to those of 
Lord Eosse. 

For this purpose, let us suppose seven clusters 
of stars placed at seven different distances in 
space, and all of which were regarded as nebulas 
before the invention of the telescope. When 
Galileo applied his little telescope to nebulas 
No. 1, or the nearest of the seven, he observed 
it to consist of separate stars so distinct that 
he could count them, and he concluded from 
their having no parallax, and being at an 
enormous distance, that each was a gigantic 
sun, Galileo tries in vain to resolve No. 2 y 
which is at a greater distance, and therefore 
though he thought that a better telescope would 
resolve it and all the other five, they still re- 
mained as nebulae in the heavens. Sir Isaac 
I Newton, however, nearly a century later, applies 



CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULAE. 177 

his little reflecting telescope to No. 2, and suc-\ 
ceeded in resolving it, while he fails in re- 
solving five, but he believes, on better evidence 
than Galileo, that the other five nebula are 
clusters of stars. Hadley, with his fine Grego- 
rian reflector, easily resolves No. 3 ; James 
Short, in like manner, resolves No. 4 ; Sir Wil- 
liam Herschel, No. 5 ; and Lord Eosse, No. 6. 
All these astronomers, after the observation of 
Galileo, believed that all the seven nebulae were 
clusters of stars, each of them with increasing 
evidence ; and Lord Eosse, that No. 7 was a 
cluster on stronger evidence than the rest. Lord 
Eosse, however, fails in resolving No. 7 with 
his largest instrument, but he does not scruple 
to express his conviction, nay, he cannot help 
being convinced, that, with a telescope, even a 
little larger than his own, but certainly with 
one twice its size, which may be the work of 
another century, — the seventh nebula will also 
be resolved. The same reasoning which we 
have used for seven nebulae is applicable to 
seventy or seven hundred, or even seven thou- 
sand; and the conclusion is inevitable, though 
the evidence of demonstration is wanting, that / 
all nebulae are clusters of stars. ^ 



178 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONEe 

There is another point of view from which 
we may regard this subject. Purely nebulous 
matter, such as that which composes comets' 
tails, and still more that which, in the form of 
the zodiacal light, is, without reason, called the 
sun's atmosphere, must consist of the minutest 
particles, so minute that they do not retard 
Venus or Mercury while they pass through the 
so-called atmosphere of the sun, which is alleged 
to extend beyond their orbits. Now, if No. 6 
was considered a nebula before it was resolved, 
it must have been regarded as consisting of 
minute particles of star dust, whereas, the mo- 
ment it was resolved, it consisted of separate 
suns, each of which was probably greater than 
our own. Is it possible that self-luminous star 
dust, at such an infinite distance from us in 
space, and so rare as to be like a non-resisting 
medium, could send to our system a light as 
intense as that which is emitted by the same 
nebula considered as a cluster of suns ! If the 
resolved nebula No. 6, and the unresolved neb- 
ula No. 7, have the same appearance and the 
same intensity of light, is it not certain that the 
latter must have the same constitution as the 
former, that is, must consist of stars ? 



CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULA. 179 

There is another aspect of this question, 
which, as it has not yet been the subject of dis- 
cussion, may deserve the attention of astrono- 
mers. It is not only quite possible, but we 
think it is almost certain, that in the distant 
sidereal spaces there may be nebulas, which, 
though really clusters of stars, never can be re- 
solved. Our hypothetical nebula, for example, 
No. 7, may not only resist the telescopes of ages 
to come, but may be incapable of resolution by 
telescopes of infinite 'power and infinite perfec- 
tion. Unless when a star is in the zenith, the 
rays by which we see it are bent and dispersed 
by the refraction of the atmosphere, and as our 
atmosphere is not a homogeneous medium, a star 
may be so infinitely minute from its distance, 
that though its light makes its way undisturbed 
in its journey of a thousand years, it may be so 
treated in its passage through our atmosphere 
that an image of it cannot be formed in the 
focus of a telescope, considered as absolutely 
perfect. An increase of magnifying power would 
only increase the effect produced by the atmos- 
phere. In the case of a single star thus acted 
upon, it would be invisible from the diffusion 



180 MOBE WORLDS THAIST 0OT, 

of its light, while in the case of clusters the 
cluster would continue to appear a nebula, the 
diffused light of each star being mingled with 
that of its neighbors. 

The interesting discovery made by Lord 
Eosse of what is called spiral nebulce, where the' 
nebulous matter may be considered as having 
been thrown off by some singular cause from 
the centre of the nebulas, may be regarded as 
hostile to the opinion that such nebulas are 
composed of separate stars. An appearance 
which might be caused by motion, is certainly 
no ground for believing that motion caused it. 
Various forms have been observed in nebulae. 
They are globular and oval, with all degrees of 
ellipticity, from a circle to a straight line ; and 
Sir John Herschel remarks it as " a fact, con- 
nected in some very intimate manner with the 
dynamical condition of their subsistence," that 
they are more difficult of resolution than globu- 
lar nebulae. Now these linear nebulae, which 
Sir John Herschel thinks are flat ellipsoids seen 
edgewise, though they may, by speculators in 
star dust, be regarded as spheres thrown into 
their ellipsoidal state by a very rapid rotation 



CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULAE. 181 

round their lesser axis, yet have no such origin, 
because they have been resolved into stars. In 
like manner the nebulas called annular, which 
have the form of rings, might be regarded by the 
same persons as produced from a still more rapid 
rotation, which we know from the beautiful 
experiments of M. Plateau, will convert a sphere 
into a ring ; but that this is not their origin is 
proved by their consisting of stars. The beauti- 
ful "nebula, for example, between @ and y Lyroe, 
has the appearance of "a flat oval solid ring." 
" The axes of the ellipse," according to Sir 
John Herschell, "are to each other in the pro- 
portion of about 4 to 5, and the opening occupies 
about half, or rather more than half the diameter. 
The central vacuity is not quite dark, but is 
filled in with faint nebulas like a gauze stretched 
over a hoop. The principal telescopes of Lord 
Eosse resolve this object into excessively minute 
stars, and show filaments of stars adhering to 
its edges." When this nebula was unresolved, 
and had the character of a ring nebula, which 
might be produced by the rapid motion of a 
nebular sphere round its axis, the star dust phi- 
losopher would have considered its form as a 
16 



182 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

proof that it could not consist of stars ; but now 
that it has been resolved, we are entitled to con- 
clude that in nebulas, such as the spiral ones, 
where there is the appearance of motion, the 
spirals are not purely nebulous matter thrown 
off from the nucleus like water twirled from a 
mop, or by any spiral movement whatever. 

As the appearance of motion, therefore, in 
particular nebulas, is no proof that they consist 
of purely nebulous matter composed of invisible 
particles, we are entitled to draw the conclusion 
that this large class of celestial bodies are clus- 
ters of stars at an immense distance from our 
own system, — that each of the stars of which 
they are composed is the sun or centre of a 
system of planets, and that these planets are 
inhabited, or if we follow a strict analogy, that 
at least one planet in each of these numberless 
systems, is like our earth, the seat of vegetable, 
animal, and intellectual life. 

Before we quit the subject of nebulae, and 
purely nebulous matter, we must notice two 
points connected with the optical appearance of 
nebulae, which we think are strong arguments 
in favor of their being resolvable into stars. If 



CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULA. 183 

a nebula consisted of phosphorescent or self-lu- 
minous atoms of nebulous matter, its light would" 
be immensely inferior in brightness to that of 
the same nebula composed of suns which are pro- 
vided with a luminous atmosphere for the very 
purpose of discharging a brilliant light. When 
we see, therefore, two nebulae of the very same 
brightness, and find by the telescope that one of 
[hem only is resolvable into stars, we can scarcely 
doubt that the other is similarly composed. "We 
cannot conceive that a nebula of phosphorescent 
stars could be visible at such enormous distances 
from our system. When a planetary nebula is 
equally bright in every part of its disc, like that 
which is a little to the south of ft Ursce Majoris, 
and which resembles a flat disc, " presented to 
us in a plane precisely perpendicular to the visual 
ray," it is impossible to regard it as nebulous 
matter in a state of aggregation. In like man- 
ner, all those nebulae, which have strange and 
irregular shapes, indicate the absence of any 
force of aggregation, and authorize us to regard 
them as clusters of stars. 



CHAPTBE X. 

GENERAL SUMMARY. 

The arguments for a plurality of worlds, con- 
tained in the preceding chapters, are so various, 
and have such different degrees of force, that 
different views of the subject will be taken by 
persons who thoroughly believe in the general 
doctrine. We can easily conceive why some 
persons may believe that all the planets which 
have satellites are inhabited, while they deny 
the inhabitability of those that have none, and 
also of the Sun and the satellites themselves. 
There are individuals, too, though we doubt 
their faith in sidereal astronomy, who readily 
believe that the whole of our planetary system 
is the seat cf life, while they are startled by the 
statement that every star in the heavens, and 
every point in a nebula which the most power- 
ful telescope has not separated from its neigh* 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 185 

bor, is a sun surrounded by inhabited planets 
like our own ; and that immortal beings are 
swarming through universal space more numer- 
ous than drops of water in the ocean, or the 
grains of sand upon its shores. But if these 
persons really believe in the distances and mag- 
nitudes of the stars, and of the laws which 
govern the binary systems of double stars, they 
must find it equally, if not more difficult to 
comprehend, why innumerable suns and worlds 
fill the immensity of the universe, revolving 
round one another, and discharging their light 
and heat into space, without a plant to spring 
under their influence, without an animal to re- 
joice in their genial beams, and without the eye 
of reason to lift itself devoutly to its Creator. 
In peopling such worlds with life and intelli- 
gence, we assign the cause of their existence; 
and w T hen the mind is once alive to this great 
truth, it cannot fail to realize the grand combi- 
nation of infinity of life with infinity of matter. 

In support of these views, we have already 

alluded to the almost incredible fact, that there 

are in our own globe hills and strata miles in 

length, composed of the fossil remains of micro- 

16*. 



186 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

scopic insects ; and we need scarcely remind the 
least informed of our readers, that theair which 
they breathe, the water which they drink, the 
food which they eat, the earth on which they 
tread, the ocean which encircles them, and the 
atmosphere above their heads, are swarming 
with universal life. Wherever we have seen 
matter we have seen life. Life was not made 
for matter, but matter for life ; and in what- 
ever spot we see its atoms, whether at our 
feet, or in the planets, or in the remotest star, 
we may be sure that life is there — life to enjoy 
the light and heat of God's bounty— to study 
His works, to recognize His glory, and to bless 
His name. 

Those ungenial minds that can be brought to 
believe that the Earth is the only inhabited 
body in the universe, will have no difficulty in 
conceiving that it also might have been without 
inhabitants. Nay, if such minds are imbued 
with geological truth, they must admit that for 
millions of years the Earth was without inhab- 
itants ; and hence we are led to the extraor- 
dinary result, that for millions of years there 
was not an intelligent creature in the vast do- 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 187 

minions of the universal King ; and that hefore 
the formation of the jprotozoic strata, there was 
neither a planet nor an animal throughout the 
infinity of space ! During this long period of 
universal death, when Nature herself was asleep, 
the Sun with his magnificent attendants, the 
planets with their faithful satellites, the stars 
in the binary systems, the Solar system itself, 
were performing their daily, their annual, and 
their secular movements, unseen, unheeded, and 
fulfilling no purpose that human reason can 
conceive, — lamps lighting nothing, — fires heat- 
ing nothing, — waters quenching nothing, — 
clouds screening nothing, — breezes fanning no- 
thing, — and everything around, mountain and 
valley, hill and dale, earth and ocean, all mean- 
ing nothing. 

The Stars 

Did grander darkling in the eternal space. 

To our apprehension, such a condition of the 
Earth, of the Solar system, and of the sidereal 
universe, would be the same as that of our own 
globe, if all its vessels of war and of commerce 
were traversing its seas, with empty cabins and 
freightless holds, — -as if all the railways on its 



188 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

surface were in full activity without passengers 
and goods, — and all our machinery beating the 
air and gnashing their iron teeth without work 
performed. A house without tenants, a city 
without citizens, present to our minds the same 
idea as a planet without life, and a universe 
without inhabitants. Why the house was built, 
why the city was founded, why the planet was 
made, and why the universe was created, it 
would be difficult even to conjecture. Equally 
great would be the difficulty were the planets 
shapeless lumps of matter poised in ether, and 
still and motionless as the grave ; but when we 
consider them as chiselled spheres teeming with 
inorganic beauty, and in fall mechanical activ- 
ity, performing their appointed motions with 
such miraculous precision, that their days and 
their years never err a second of time in hun- 
dreds of centuries, the difficulty of believing 
them to be without life is, if possible, immeas- 
urably increased. To conceive any one mate- 
rial globe, whether a gigantic clod slumbering 
in space, or a noble planet equipped like our 
own, and duly performing its appointed task, to 
have no living occupants, or not in a state of 



GENERAL SUMMARY.. 189 

preparation to receive them, seems to us one of 
those notions which could be harbored only in 
an ill-educated and ill-regulated mind, — a mind 
without faith and without hope : — But to con- 
ceive a whole universe of moving and revolving 
worlds in such a category, indicates, in our ap- 
prehension, a mind dead to feeling and shorn 
of reason. 

But we have been mistaken in thinking that 
the universe was dead : it was but unborn, the 
perfect chrysalis from which the living butterfly 
was to spring. Protozoic forms arose at the 
Divine command,' — the infant plant, the simple 
mollusc, the nobler fish, the still nobler quad- 
ruped, successively appeared, and Man,the image 
of his Maker, and the work of His hand, was 
invested with the sovereignty of the globe. 
The Earth, therefore, was made for man, mat- 
ter for life; and wherever another earth is 
seen, we are forced to the conviction that it 
was made like ours for the use of an intellectual 
race. 

Although we have repeatedly alluded, in the 
preceding pages, to the absurdity of supposing 
suns and planets to be made without any con- 



190 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

ceivable object, yet the argument may be pre- 
sented in a more general form. In all the 
works winch are the result of human skill, the 
great object is to produce a given effect by the 
smallest expenditure of labor and of materials. 
The genius of the artist is less strikingly shown 
in producing a new effect, than in producing 
one well known, with economy of time, of work, 
and of material. Everything that is not neces- 
sary to the final effect of a process, or of a ma- 
chine, is labor in vain, — a species of work in 
which man never willingly indulges. Even 
where labor is not hallowed by the sweat of 
the brow, — where it does not earn bread, or is 
not exhausted in the great structures of civiliz- 
ation, it is never labor in vain. Every act of 
the mind, and every motion of the hand which 
it guides, is a step in the great march of social 
progress, however frivolous its work may seem, 
and however useless its immediate result. The 
toy for the child, the telescope for the sage, the 
locomotive for the railway, the steam-ship for the 
ocean, are equally, though in different degrees, 
the result of useful occupation. In the world 
of instinct there is the same economy of skill 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 191 

and labor, — the spider and the bee, the ant 
and the beaver, are spendthrifts neither of time 
nor of toil ; and in all the works of the Divine 
artist around us, — in all the laws of matter and 
of motion, — in the frame of man and of ani- 
mals, of plants and of inorganic nature, the 
economy of power is universally displayed. No- 
thing is made in vain — nothing by a complex 
process which can be made by a simple one; 
and it has often been remarked by the most 
diligent students of the living world, that the 
infinite wisdom of the Creator is more strikingly 
displayed in the economy than in the manifes- 
tation of power. 

With such truths before us, is it possible to 
believe that, with the exception of our little 
planet, all the other planets of the system, all 
the hundreds of comets, all the systems of the 
universe, are to our reason made in vain? It 
is doubtless possible that the almighty Archi- 
tect of the universe may have had other objects 
in view, incomprehensible by us, than that of 
supporting animal and vegetable life in these 
magnificent spheres ; but as the question we are 
discussing is one in which we can appeal only 



192 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

to human reason, and as human reason in its 
highest form cannot discover these other objects, 
we the inhabitants of one of the least of these 
spheres, which has for immeasurable periods of 
time been preparing for the residence of man, 
must believe, under the guidance of that 
reason, that they were destined certainly, like 
our Earth, for an intellectual race, and destined 
probably for a previous and lengthened occu- 
pation by plants and animals, in order that their 
inhabitants may study on the tombstones of the 
past those miraculous processes of growth and 
decay, of destruction and renovation, by which 
there has been provided for them so noble an 
inheritance. 

In the celebrated sermon On the Origin and 
Frame of the World, to which we have already 
referred, Dr. Bentley has taken a view of this 
part of the question which, though slightly 
different from ours, leads him to the same 
conclusion. Considering "that the soul of one 
virtuous and religious man is of greater worth 
and excellency than the Sun and his planets, 
and all the stars in the world," Dr. Bentley 
expresses his willingness to believe, that " their 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 193 

-usefulness to man might be the sole end of 
their creation, if it could be proved that they 
were as beneficial to" us as the Polar Star was 
formerly for navigation, or as the Moon is for 
producing the tides, and lighting us in winter 
nights. " But," he adds, "we dare not under- 
take to show what advantage is brought to us 
by those innumerable stars in the galaxy and 
other parts of the firmament, not discernible 
by naked eyes, and yet each many thousand 
times bigger than the whole body of the Earth. 
If you say, they beget in us a great idea and 
veneration of the mighty Author and Governor 
of such stupendous bodies, and excite and 
elevate our minds to His adoration and praise ; 
you say very truly and well. But would it not 
raise in us a higher apprehension of the infinite 
majesty and boundless beneficence of God, to 
suppose that these remote and vast bodies were 
formed not merely upon our account to be 
peeped at through an optic glass, but for 
different ends and nobler purposes ? And yet 
who will deny but there are great multitudes 
of lucid stars even beyond the reach of the 
best telescopes ; and that every visible star may 
17 



194 MORE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

have opaque planets* revolving about tliem 
which, we cannot discover ? Now, if they were 
not created for our sakes, it is certain and 
evident that they were not made for their own ; 
for matter has no life nor perception, is not 
conscious of its own existence, nor capable of 
happiness, nor gives the sacrifice of praise and 
worship to the Author of its being. It remains, 
therefore, that all bodies were formed for the 
sake of intelligent minds; and as the Earth 
was principally designed for the being and 
service and contemplation of men ; why may 
not all other planets be created for the like 
uses, each for their own inhabitants which have 
life and understanding ?"f 

Various attempts have been made, but 
without much success, to give a popular illus- 

* This is the earliest allusion, we remember, to dark bodies in the side- 
real regions, unless Dr. Bentley uses the word opaque in contradistinction 
to self-luminous bodies. The planets in single or binary systems are invisi- 
ble from their distance, not from their being unable to reflect light. Mr. 
Pigot had long ago concluded, from various celestial phenomena, that 
there are " primary invisible bodies or unenlightened stars that have ever 
remained in eternal darkness." The late Professor Bessel having found 
that the proper motions of Sirius and Procyon deviate very sensibly from 
uniformity, has come to the conclusion, that they describe orbits in space 
under the influence of central forces round dark or non-luminous central 
bodies, not very remote from the stars themselves. 

t Eighth Sermon, pp. 5, 6. 



GENEEAL SUMMARY. 195 

tration of the argument from analogy, by 
which we infer the existence of inhabitants in 
the planets, from their similarity to the Earth. 
M. Fontenelle, the first person who attempted 
this, gave the following illustration : — 

"Suppose," says he, " that there never had 
been any communication between Paris and St. 
Denis, and that a person who had never been 
out of the city was upon the towers of Notre 
Dame, and saw St. Denis at a distance : He is 
asked if he believes that St. Denis is inhabited, 
like Paris. He will boldly answer, No. For 
he will say, I see distinctly the inhabitants of 
Paris ; but those of St. Denis I do not see ; 
and I never heard anybody speak of them. It 
is true, some will tell him, that from the tow- 
ers of Notre Dame he cannot see the inhabit- 
ants of St. Denis, on account of the dis- 
tance ; — that all that he can see of St. Denis 
greatly resembles Paris ; — that St. Denis has- 
steeples, houses, and walls, and that it may 
very well resemble Paris in being inhabited. 
All this will produce no effect upon my Pa- 
risian ; he will persist in maintaining that St. 
Denis is not inhabited, as he sees nobody. 



196 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

Our St. Denis is the Moon, and each, of us is 
this citizen of Paris, who was never out of it. 
You are too severe, said the Marchioness ; we 
are not such fools as your citizen ; for, as he 
sees that St. Denis is just like Paris, he must 
have lost his reason, if he does not believe that 
it is inhabited ; but the Moon is not at all 
made like the Earth. Take care, madam, I re- 
plied ; for if the Moon in every respect resem- 
bles the Earth, you will be obliged to believe 
that the Moon is inhabited."* 

This illustration is certainly defective ; for, 
as Pontenelle subsequently remarks, the Moon 
does not so much resemble the Earth as St. 
Denis does Paris. The mistake which the 
author commits arises from his not comparing 
the Earth with a planet, like Jupiter, with 
satellites, and clouds, and trade winds, and a 
diurnal motion. In this case, the citizen 
should have been a villager looking at Paris 
from the steeple of St. Denis, and his answer 
should have been, I think it very probable 
that there are or have been inhabitants in 
Paris, but it is possible that they may have all 

* CEuvres de Fontenelle, 2de Series, vol. ii. p. 49, edit. 1758. 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 197 

left it, or have not yet arrived. It is just pos- 
sible, too, that these walls may never have been 
a protection to inhabitants, nor these churches 
thronged, nor these houses occupied ; but if 
this were the case, the sovereign who founded 
the city, who encircled it with a wall, who 
erected the churches, and who built the houses, 
must have been a fool or a madman. 

A very different illustration is given by 
Huygens : "If any person," says he, " were 
shown, in the body of a dissected dog, the 
heart, the stomach, the lungs, the intestines, 
and then the veins, the arteries, and the nerves, 
then, though he never saw the open body of an 
animal, he could hardly doubt that the same 
structure and variety of parts existed in the ox, 
the sow, and other animals. In like manner, 
if we knew the nature of one of the satellites of 
Jupiter and Saturn, would we not believe that 
the very same things which were found in it 
would be found in all the other satellites ? In 
like manner, if we saw anything in one comet, 
we would conclude that this was the structure 
of all. There is therefore much weight in 
conclusions drawn from analogies, and in in- 
17* 



198 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 

ferences from things that are seen to things 
that are not seen.""* 

The author of the Essay against a Plurality 
of "Worlds, considers the illustration of Fon- 
tenelle as unfair ; and he gives the following 
modification of it as representing his own ar- 
gument more fairly :• — ■ 

" Let it be supposed," he says, " that we in- 
habit an island, from which innumerable other 
islands are visible, but the art of navigation 
being quite unknown, we are ignorant whether 
any of them are inhabited. In some of these 
islands are seen masses more or less resembling 
churches, and some of our neighbors assert that 
these are churches ; that churches must be sur- 
rounded by houses, and that houses must have 
inhabitants ; others hold that the seeming 
churches are only peculiar forms of rocks : in 
this state of the debate everything depends upon 
the degree of resemblance to churches which the 
forms exhibit. But suppose that telescopes are 
invented and employed with diligence on the 
questionable shapes. In a long course of careful 
and skilful examination, no house is seen, and 

* Cosmotheoros, &c, lib. i. Hugenii Opera, torn, ii, pp. 652, 653. 



GENEKAL SUMMARY. 199 

the rocks do not at all become more like churches, 
rather the contrary. So far, it would seem, the 
probability of inhabitants in the islands is less- 
ened. But there are other reasons brought into 
view. Our island is a long extinct volcano, with 
a tranquil and fertile soil, but the other islands 
are apparently somewhat different. Some of 
them are active volcanoes, the volcanic opera- 
tions covering, so far as we can discern, the 
whole island ; others undergo changes, such as 
weather or earthquakes may produce ; but in 
none of them can we discover such changes as 
show the hand of man. For these islands, it 
would seem, the probability of inhabitants is 
farther lessened.* And so long as we have no 
better evidence than these for forming a judg- 
ment, it would surely be accounted rash to assert 
that the islands in general are inhabited ; and 
unreasonable to blame those who deny or doubt 
it. Nor would such blame be justified by adduc- 
ing theological or & priori arguments ; as that 
the analogy of islands with islands makes the 
assumption allowable ; or that it is inconsistent 

* The observation of volcanoes and church-like rocks, by the tele- 
scope, has no parallel in the analogy of the planets. It is not the moon 
that our author is dealing with, but innumerable planets. 



200 MOEE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

with, the plan of the Creator of islands to leave 
them uninhabited. For we know that many 
islands are or were long uninhabited. And if 
ours were an island occupied by a numerous, 
well-governed, moral, and religious race, of 
which the history was known, and of which the 
relation to the Creator was connected with its 
history ; the assumption of a history, more or 
less similar to ours, for the inhabitants of the 
other islands, whose existence was utterly un- 
proved, would, probably, be generally deemed 
a fitter field for the romance writer than for 
the philosopher. It could not, at best, rise 
above the region of vague conjecture."* 

This illustration is, we think, so unfair, and 
so constructed to answer the author's purpose, 
that we concur in his opinion that the probabil- 
ity of the islands being inhabited " does not rise 
above the region of vague conjecture." No illus- 
tration indeed can be fair or effective, unless it 
relates to separate and independent works of Grod, 
from the condition of one of which we draw in- 
ferences by analogy relative to the state of others 
of which we know nothing, excepting their points 

* Of the Plurality of Worlds, An Essay, pp. 157-159. 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 201 

of similitude. In the illustration of Huygens, 
for example, tlie dog, the ox, and the sow, are 
independent existences, of whose internal struc- 
ture we know nothing ; but having found cer- 
tain organs upon dissecting the dog, we infer 
the existence of the same organs in the ox, from 
the external similitude in their general form, 
and in various external parts. In the parallel 
between islands and planets, the peopled islands 
should have been invested with certain properties 
or conditions necessary for its inhabitants, which 
should have been possessed by the other islands. 
The inhabited island too, should have been made 
as small in reference to the rest as the Earth is 
to Jupiter and Saturn. But independent of 
these defects in the illustration, the mind of 
the reader is otherwise prepared to admit that 
they may have no inhabitants, because we know 
of hundreds of islands without inhabitants. We 
can assign also a very good reason why they were 
made, and why they are not inhabited, and if we 
were to be assured of the fact, it would excite no 
surprise whatever. We coiild not say that Grod 
therefore made them in vain, because when the 
art of navigation is discovered, they may be 



202 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

found to contain gold and silver, coal and iron, 
and excellent harbors, such, as exist in our in- 
habited island. We, the islanders, may suppose 
also, that the islands either have been or will 
be inhabited, and we are entitled to make this 
supposition, because we must have been origin- 
ally created upon it, and not brought there by 
the art of navigation ; and consequently the 
same creation of inhabitants may have taken 
place, or may yet take place, in the uninhabit- 
ed ones. It is obvious, from these remarks, that 
the previous knowledge of the reader, to whom 
the appeal is made, influences what he con- 
ceives would be the speculation of the island- 
er ; and the confusion of ideas which thus takes 
place, renders the illustration illusory. 

The best illustration which we can conceive, 
is to suppose a philosopher contemplating from 
a distance the bodies of the Solar system, and 
wholly ignorant of their condition. He examines 
them so as to acquire all the knowledge which 
we possess of their size — their motions— the 
influences they receive from the Sun, and all the 
phenomena disclosedby the telescope. He knows 
nothing about their being inhabited or uninha- 



GENERAL SUMMARY. 203 

bited, but being permitted to visit the Earth, he 
finds it inhabited, and observes the relation which 
exists between vegetable* animal, and intellect- 
ual life, — the influences which emanate from the 
sun and moon, and the days and nights, and 
seasons and atmospheric changes which charac- 
terize our globe. He then takes his place in the 
distance, and pondering over all the bodies of 
the system, he will doubtless conclude that they 
are all inhabited like the Earth. Had he first 
visited Jupiter, with its gorgeous magnitude 
and numerous satellites, and found it inhabited, 
he might have conceived it possible that as the 
monarch of the system, it might alone have 
enjoyed the dignity of being the seat of life ; 
but even in this case, the force of analogy 
would have compelled him to view the Solar 
system as one great material scheme planned 
by its Creator, as the residence of moral and in- 
tellectual life. 



CHAPTBE XI 

REPLY TO OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 

In the preceding chapters we have submitted 
to the reader the facts and arguments by which 
the doctrine of a plurality of worlds may be 
maintained, and we have, at the same time, 
endeavored to answer a variety of objections 
of a moral and scientific nature, which naturally 
presented themselves in discussions involv- 
ing so many considerations. We have now, 
however, a more arduous duty to perform. 
The author of the Essay to which we have 
frequently had occasion to refer, has devoted a 
whole volume to an elaborate attack upon the 
doctrine we have been supporting. With 
acquirements of the highest order, and talents 
of no common kind, which, we think, might 
have been more usefully employed, he has 
marshalled all the truths and theories of 



OBJECTION'S DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 205 

geology, and all the facts of astronomy, against 
popular and deeply-cherished opinions — opin- 
ions which the humblest Christian has shared 
with the most distinguished philosophers and 
divines, and which no interests, moral or relig- 
ious, require us to surrender. In questions of 
doubtful speculation with which vulgar error is 
largely mingled, we applaud the writer who 
boldly girds himself for the task of exposing 
presumption and ignorance, however generally 
they may prevail ; but in the case with which 
we are dealing, where the opinions assailed 
are entrenched in right feeling and embalmed 
in the warmth of the affections, and where 
they are as probable as the theories and specu- 
lations by which they are to be superseded, we 
can ascribe to no better feeling than a love of 
notoriety any attempt to ridicule or unsettle 
them. 

The first and the most plausible of the argu- 
ments maintained by the Essayist is drawn 
from geological facts and theories. We have 
already, in a preceding chapter, explained these 
facts, and admitted, with certain limitations, 
(which, to give our opponent every advantage 
18 



206 MOKE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

we at present abandon,) that during a long 
period of time when the Earth was preparing 
for the residence of man, it was the seat only of 
vegetable and animal life. 

Since the Earth, then, was during a very 
long time (a million* of years we shall say) 
uninhabited by intelligent beings, our author 
draws the conclusion that all the other planets 
may he occupied at present with a life no higher 
than that of the brutes, or with no life at all ; 
that is, that there is not a plurality of worlds 
inhabited by rational beings. Now this is not 
the conclusion which the premises authorize. 
If God took a million of years to prepare the 
Earth for man, the probability is, that all the 
planets were similarly prepared for inhabitants, 
and that they are now occupied by rational 
beings. If one or more of them are only in the 
act of being prepared, and are not yet the seat 
of intelligence, analogy forces us to the conclu- 
sion, that they will be inhabited like the Earth. 
The assertion that they may be occupied by no 
life at all, is contrary to all analogy, unless we 

* We use this number to avoid circumlocution. The Essayist uses 
the word myriads of years, as the period of only one of the earliest 
formations ! 



OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 207 

suppose that all the planets are only in that 
stage of preparation which preceded the pro- 
tozoic age, — a supposition which no person is 
entitled to make, but which, if it were true, 
would prove that the time was approaching 
when all the planets were to be inhabited, like 
the Earth, 

It is admitted by every geologist that the 
Earth was not only made to be a fit residence 
for the human family, but that it was made in 
such a manner that man might see the won- 
derful processes by which it was prepared, and 
read its vast chronology in the history of its 
fossil remains. Is it not probable, therefore, 
that the other planets were formed in a similar 
manner, and with a similar object? And if 
analogy leads us to believe that all the planets 
have been or are in the azote, or jprotozoic, or 
joalceozoic stage of formation, the conclusion is 
inevitable, that they are occupied, or are about 
to be occupied, by beings formed after God's 
image ; and consequently, that there is a plu- 
rality of worlds. We may put the argument 
in a simpler form. In the time of Huygens 
and Fontenelle and Bentley, when the Mosaic 



208 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

account of the creation was adopted in its literal 
meaning, the argument from, analogy had a 
certain degree of force. Has that degree of 
force been diminished by the subsequent dis- 
covery that a million of years, in place of six 
days, were occupied in the preparation of the 
Earth? The argument from analogy is not 
only not affected by this discovery, but the 
discovery itself furnishes us with the new 
ground of analogy, that planets are made for 
the very purpose of being inhabited, — that they 
are made in such a way as to teach their in- 
habitants the wonderful processes by which 
the Almighty has made them, — and that they 
are made of materials essentially necessary for 
man's personal and social happiness. Man was 
not made for the planet — but the planet was 
made for man. 

Quitting the ground of analogy, our author 
has recourse to what we consider the most 
ingenious, though shallow, piece of sophistry 
which we have ever encountered in modern 
dialectics. He founds an elaborate argument 
on the mutual relation of an atom of time and 
an atom of space, comparing the different 



OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 209 

periods of time occupied in the formation of 
the Earth with the different distances in space. 
In this process he divides the great geological 
period into four periods of time, and the infinity 
of space into four lengths of space ; and he 
" assumes that the numbers which express the 
antiquity of the four periods" are " on the 
same scale as the numbers which express the 
four magnitudes," or lengths of space. We 
have placed these periods in contrast in the 
following table, to exhibit clearly the nature 
of the argument : — 

Time. Space. 

1. "The Present organic condition 1. "The magnitude of the Earth." 

of the Earth." 

2. "The Tertiary period of geol- 2. "The magnitude of the Solar 

ogists which preceded that." system compared with the 

Earth." 

3. "The Secondary period which 3. "The distance of the nearest 

was anterior to that." fixed stars compared with the 

Solar system." 

4. " The Primary period which pre- 4. " The distance of the most remote 

ceded, the Secondary." nebula compared with the near- 

est fixed star." 

In this table of Time and Space, the time 
during which the Earth has been in its present 
condition, which is nearly 6,000 years, is con- 
trasted with the magnitude of the Earth, which 
18* 



210 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

is 8,000 miles nearly in diameter, and these 
numbers are units in the scale, the one being 
called an atom of time compared with the du- 
ration of the primary geological period, and the 
other an atom of space compared with the dis- 
tance of the remotest nebulae. Now the im- 
portance, or the significance of the Earth, in 
regard to space, is fairly measured by its diam- 
eter of 8,000 miles, which is a fixed quantity; 
but its significance with regard to time is not 
measured by 6,000 years, because its duration 
is constantly increasing, and every year adds to 
its significance ; that is, the atom of time is ap- 
proximating to infinity, while the atom of space 
is invariable. Admitting, however, our author's 
premises, let us consider his extraordinary con- 
clusions : — 

1 'We find," says he, "that man (the human 
race, from its present origin till now) has occu- 
pied but an atom of time, as he has occupied but 
an atom of space. 11 And again, — 

"The scale of man's insignificance is of the 
same order in reference to time as to space. 
. . . . If the Earth as the habitation of 
man is a speck in the midst of an infinity of 



OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 211 

space, the Earth as the habitation of man is also 
a speck at the end of an infinity of time. If we 
are as nothing in the surrounding universe, we 
are as nothing in the elapsed eternity ; or rather 
in the elapsed organic antiquity during which 
the Earth has existed, and been the abode of 
life. . . . Or, is the objection this? That 
if we suppose the Earth only to be occupied 
with inhabitants, all the other objects of the 
universe are waste, turned to no purpose ? Is 
work of this kind unsuited to the character of 
the Creator? But here, again, we have the like 
waste in the occupation of the Earth. All its 
previous ages have been wasted upon mere brute 
life ; after, so far as we can see, for myriads of 
years upon the lowest, the least conscious forms 
of life, upon shell-fish, corals, sponges. Why, 
then, should not the seas and continents of other 
planets be occupied at present with a life no higher 

than this, OR WITH NO LIFE AT ALL. 

The intelligent part of creation is thrust into the 
compass of a few years in the course of myriads 
of ages ; why then not into the compass of a 
few miles in the expanse of systems ? . . . 
If then the Earth be the sole inhabited spot in 



212 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

the work of creation, the oasis in the desert of 
our system, there is nothing in this contrary to 
the analogy of creation." 

That is, The Earth, the ATOM of space, is 
the only one of the planetary and sidereal worlds 
that is inhabited, because it was so long without 
inhabitants, and has been occupied only an ATOM 
OF time ! If any of our readers see the 
force of this argument, they must possess 
an acuteness of perception to which we lay no 
claim. To us it is not only illogical ; — it is a 
mere sound in the ear, without any sense in the 
brain. What relation is there between the 
SHORT period of man's occupation of the Earth, 
and the SMALL portion which he occupies in 
space ? If there is such a relation, that we can 
reason from the truth of the first to the proba- 
bility of the second, then we can reason as 
justly from the truth of the second to the prob- 
ability of the first Now, let us suppose it 
to be as certain that the Earth is the only in- 
habited planet, it is as certain that Man has 
occupied the Earth only for the short period of 
6,000 years, could any rational being allege that 
because man occupied only an atom of space, 



OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 213 

he therefore must live only an atom of time 
upon the Earth ? 

But even if we admit the result with regard 
to Man, the argument does not apply to other 
intellectual beings than Man — to an inferior or 
to a superior race that never occupied the Earth 
at all. If man is thus limited by a syllogism 
to the occupation of one planet, one atom of 
space, — an angelic race, who never lived on the 
Earth at all, may be indulged with the occupa- 
tion of Jupiter. But, farther, let us suppose 
that we learn by the telescope that every planet 
and satellite in the Solar system is inhabited by 
Man, he would still occupy but an atom of 
space, and our author's argument would go to 
prove that none of the fixed stars or binary 
systems are inhabited. In like manner, if we 
could prove that the binary systems were in- 
habited, the sum of them all would be but an 
atom of space, and our author would still re- 
joice in his conclusion, that the clusters of 
stars and nebulge were uninhabited vapor. 

If the reasoning which we have examined 
be sound in its nature, it would fail entirely 
by a change in the premises. If it is possible, 



214 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

that the time of tlie Earth's preparation was 
comparatively short, or that intelligent beings 
occupied the Earth previous to man ; and if it 
improbable that Man will continue to occupy 
the Earth during a period equal, or approxi- 
mating to the period of the Earth's preparation, 
the whole of our author's argument has neither 
force nor meaning. 

If the Almighty has occupied a million of 
years in preparing the crust of the Earth as a 
suitable residence for man, by the slow opera- 
tion of secondary causes, and has deposited the 
remains of vegetable and animal life in each 
series of its formation, in order to enable man 
to read the history of his omnipotence and 
wisdom, is that any reason why the Earth, the 
residence of man, should, among countless and 
more glorious worlds than his own, be the only 
one that is inhabited? Eeason and common 
sense dictate a very different opinion. If nearly 
infinity of time has been employed to provide 
for intellectual and immortal life so glorious an 
abode, is it not probable that nearly infinity of 
space will be devoted to the same noble pur- 
pose? 



I ■ 
CHAPTBE XII. 

OBJECTIONS FEOM THE NATURE OF NEBULA. 

In a preceding chapter on nebulae, we trust 
we have satisfied the candid inquirer that all 
nebulae are clusters of stars, and that there is 
no proof whatever, not even the shadow of 
proof, that in the sidereal regions there is what 
is called nebulous matter, either existing in a 
stationary condition, or aggregating into stars. 
The author of the Essay Of the Plurality of 
Worlds , whose astronomical objections to the 
doctrine of a plurality of worlds we are about 
to consider, very dexterously commences his 
argument with an attack upon that part of the 
doctrine which relates to nebulae. He is not 
content with the statement of facts, but he at- 
tempts to throw ridicule upon his opponents by 
the application of words which are calculated to 
influence the minds of ignorant or inattentive 



216 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

readers. By calling nebulse clouds, and pieces 
of comets 1 tails, and the stars into which, they are 
resolved, shining dots, pieces of bright curd, 
luminous grains, and lumps of light, he fancies 
that he has demolished the opinion of astrono- 
mers that these dots are suns ; that they are " as 
far from each other as the dog-star" is from us ; 
that each sun has its system of planets, and 
each planet its animal and vegetable life. 

" An astronomer," says the Essayist, " armed 
with a powerful telescope, resolves a nebula, 
discerns that a luminous cloud is composed of 
shining dots ; — but what are these dots? Into 
what does he resolve the nebula ? Into stars, it 
is commonly said. Let us not wrangle about 
words. By all means let those dots be stars, if 
we know about.what we are speaking,' — if a star 
merely means a luminous dot in the sky. But 
that these stars shall resemble in their nature 
stars of the first magnitude, and that such stars 
shall resemble our sun, are surely very bold 
structures of assumption to build on such a 
basis. Some nebulae are resolvable' — are resolv- 
able into distinct points — certainly a very cu- 
rious, probably a very important discovery. We 



OBJECTIONS PROM THE NATURE OF NEBULJE. 217 

may hereafter learn, that all nebulae are resolv- 
able into distinct points ; that would be a still 
more curious discovery. But what would it 
amount to ? What would be the simple way of 
expressing it without hypothesis and without 
assumption ? Plainly this,— that the substance 
of all nebulse is not continuous but discrete ; — 
separable and separate into distinct luminous 
elements ; nebulae are, it would thus seem, as 
it were, of a curdled or granulated texture; 
they have run into lumps of light, or have been 
formed originally of such lumps. Highly curi- 
ous ! But what are these lumps ? How large 
are they ? At what distances ? Of what struc- 
ture? Of what use? It would seem that he 
must be a bold man who undertakes to answer 
these questions. Certainly he must appear to 
ordinary thinkers to be very bold, who, in re- 
ply, says gravely and confidently, as if he had 
authority for his teaching, These lumps, man, 
are suns ; they are distant from each other as 
far as the dog-star is from us ; each has its 
system of planets, which revolve around it ; and 
each of these planets is the seat of an animal 
and vegetable creation. Among these planets 
19 



218 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

some, we do not yet know bow many, are occu- 
pied by rational and responsible creatures like 
man ; and tbe only matter wbicb perplexes us, 
bolding tbis belief on astronomical grounds, 
is, tbat we do not quite see bow to put our 
tbeology into its due place and form in our 
system."* 

Tbis, surely, is neitber tbe language nor tbe 
tone of a man of science in searcb of trutb, or 
bolding in respect tbe great revelations of as- 
tronomy. Tbe Essayist triumphantly asks yew- 
questions, and tells us tbat be would be a bold 
man tbat undertakes to answer tbem. We 
accept tbe challenge, and appeal to our readers. 

Question 1. How large are the lumps of light \ 
or tbe sbining dots, into wbicb tbe astronomer's 
powerful telescope bas resolved tbe nebulas? 
Tbese lumps of ligbt are admitted to be stars 
sbining by their own ligbt. Now, it has been 
shown by the most distinguished astronomers, 
by Herschel and by Struve, tbat in the various 
order of distances in space, the distances of the 
nebulae are the greatest. According to the re- 
cent researches of Mr. Peters, as given by M. 

* Essay, pp. 120—122.. 



OBJECTIONS FKOM THE NATUKE OF NEBULA 219 



Struve,* the following are the distances of the 
stars of different magnitudes, as ascertained by 
a process approximately correct : — 



Apparent 
Magnitudes. 


Parallaxes. 


Distances in radii 
of Earth's orbit. 


1, 


. /; -209 


98600 


2, 


. 0"\L16 


1778000 


3, 


. /7 D76 


2725000 


4, 


. 0"'054 


3850000 


5, 


. o"-o37 


5378000 


6, 


. 0"-027 


7616000 


81, 


. 0"*008 


24490000 


iii, . 


. // '00092 


224500000 



As the nebulae are obviously more remote than 
any of the stars in the above table, and as the 
nearest of these stars must, from their distance, 
be equal to our sun, we are entitled to conclude, 
that the stars or nebulas must be of a much 
greater size. Sir John Herschel observes, that 
" when we consider that the united lustre of a 
group or globular cluster of stars, affects the eye 
with a less impression of light than a star of 
the fourth magnitude, (for the largest of these 
clusters is scarcely visible to the naked eye,) the 
idea we are thus compelled to form of their dis- 
tance from us may prepare us for almost any 

* Etudes d'Astronomie Stellaire. 



220 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

estimate of their dimensions. A visible dot, 
or a visible lump, must therefore be a body of 
enormous magnitude, and though, we cannot 
give its size in miles or diameters of the Earth, 
we are sure that every astronomer in the old or 
the new world will allow that we have answered 
the question with sufficient accuracy in reference 
to the object for which it was asked. The size 
of the DOT or lump is of sufficient magnitude to 
he a sun. 

Quest. 2. At what distances are the dots or 
lumps from one another ? 

In order to answer this question, the Essayist 
knows well that we require to have the appa- 
rent distance between the centres of the dots, 
and upon the supposition that the two dots are 
at the same distance from us, we can easily de- 
termine their distances from the parallax which 
may be assumed for resolvable nebulae. There 
are double stars in the binary system, whose 
apparent distance is as small as that of the dots 
or stars in the nebulae, and yet every astronomer 
admits that between them, there is ample room 
for a system of planets round each. 

Quest. 3. What is the structure of these dots 



OBJECTIONS FEOM THE NATUKE OF NEBULA. 221 

or stars ? The author certainly does hot expect 
to learn whether these are made of granite or 
greywacke. Analogy teaches ns that their struc- 
ture will be similar to that of the only sun with 
which we are acquainted. It will consist of a 
luminous envelope enclosing a dark nucleus. 

Quest. 4. ' What is the use of the dots or stars ? 
Being large bodies, and self-luminous, they can 
be of no conceivable use but to give light to 
planets, or to the solid nuclei of which they 
consist. 

Having thus given answers to our author's 
questions, — answers which we are confident 
would be given by every astronomer, may we 
not ask in return, — What is the size, and dis- 
tance, and structure, and use of the dots upon 
his hypothesis, that they are patches of comets' 
tails or luminous grains ? The Essayist is silent. 
Should he be the very bold man to make the 
attempt, the astronomical world would repu- 
diate his theory and his answers. 

But there is another way of meeting objec- 
tions of such an unreasonable character. Our 
author is a firm believer in the geological spec- 
ulation, that the Earth required " myriads of 
19* 



222 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

millions " of years for its formation, and assum- 
ing his principle of contrasting time and space, 
may we not ask him in return, What was the 
structure of the primitive Earth ? What were 
the periods of time required for the deposition 
of each formation ? And of what use was an 
arrangement requiring myriads of millions of 
years for its completion ? 

Believing that " nebulas are vast masses of 
incoherent, or gaseous matter, of immense 
tenuity, and destitute of solid moving bodies," 
a theory which he derives from another theory 
called the nebular hypothesis, without adducing 
the least trace of evidence in its support, our 
author boasts, not surely in the spirit of the 
inductive philosophy, that he seems to have 
made it CERTAIN that the celestial objects (the 
nebulas) are not inhabited. To this we reply, 
that we have made it moke peobable that the 
celestial objects are inhabited, — an assertion 
less presumptuous, but more certain than his. 

We have described in a preceding chapter 
the spiral nebulce discovered by Lord Eosse, 
and we have endeavored to explain the ap- 
pearance of motion, which may be considered 



OBJECTIONS FEOM THE NATURE OF NEBULAE. 223 

as indicated by the spirals which they exhibit. 
With his accustomed boldness, and extrava- 
gance of speculation, our Essayist has made 
the following observations on these spiral forms: 
- — " The comet of Encke," he affirms, " describes 
a spiral gradually converging to the Sun," and 
"in 30,000 years this comet will complete its 
spiral, and be absorbed in the central mass. 

But this spiral converging to its pole 

so slowly that it reaches it only after forming 
10,000 circuits (or spirals,") while " there are 
at most three or more circular or oval sweeps 
in each spiral (of the nebulae), or even the spiral 
reaches the centre before it has completed a 
single revolution round it." From data like 
these, the following theory of the spiral nebulae 
is deduced: — -"If we suppose the comet (that 
of Encke) to consist of a luminous mass, or a 
string of masses, which would occupy a consid- 
erable arch of such an orbit, the orbit would 
be marked by a track of light as an oval spiral, 
or if such a comet were to separate into two 
portions, as we have, with our own eyes, recently 
seen BielcHs Comet do, or into a greater num- 
ber ; then these portions would be distributed 



224 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

along such a spiral. And if we suppose a largo 
mass of cometic matter thus to move in a highly- 
resisting medium, and to consist of patches of 
different densities, then some would move faster, 
and some more slowly, but all in spirals, such 
as have been spoken of, and the general aspect 
produced would be that of the Spiral Nebulce, 
which I have endeavored to describe." A 
hypothesis more wild and gratuitous than this 
was never before submitted to the scientific 
world. In what part of the nebula do the 
cometic patches reside before they begin their 
motion of descent to the nucleus ; and what is 
the cause of their quitting their place of rest ? 
9SF o comet out of the many hundreds that have 
been observed, has been so negligent of its tail 
as to leave it behind. Encke's Comet has been 
equally careful of its appendage, and the divis- 
ion of Biela's Comet was only apparent But 
even if a comet were to separate into a number 
of portions, these portions would, like the divis- 
ion of Biela's Comet, travel along with it and 
again unite themselves into one, so that the 
analogy of this comet is destructive of the spec- 
ulation which it is brought to support. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OBJECTIONS FROM THE NATURE OF THE FIXED 
STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 

Having, as our author congratulates him- 
self, "cleared away the supposed inhabitants 
from the outskirts of creation, so far as the 
nebula are the outskirts of creation," he pro- 
ceeds to consider the fixed stars, and examine 
any evidence which he may be able to discover 
as to the probability of their containing in 
themselves, or in their accompanying bodies, as 
planets, inhabitants of any kind. We have 
already stated the grounds upon which the 
most distinguished astronomers have believed 
that single and double stars are accompanied 
with planets similar to our own ; and we shall 
now consider the objections which are made to 
this opinion. 



226 MORE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

Beginning with clusters of stars, the author 
whose opinions we have been controverting, 
justly observes, that they are in the same 
category with resolvable nebulae, and he there- 
fore regards it as " a very bold assumption to 
assume, without any farther proof, that these 
bright points are suns, distant from each other 
as far as we are from the nearest stars. When 
these clusters are globular, Sir John Herschel 
regards their form as " indicating the existence 
of some general bond of union in the nature of 
an attractive force ;" and assuming that the 
" globular space may be filled with equal stars, 
uniformly dispersed through it, and very numer- 
ous, each of them attracting every other with 
a force inversely as the square of the distance, 
. . . each star would describe a perfect ellipse 
about the common centre of gravity as its 
centre," Sir John therefore conceives that "such, 
a system might subsist, and realize in a great 
measure that abstract and ideal harmony which 
Newton has shown to characterize a law of 
force directly as the distance." 

Referring to this ingenious theory of globular 
clusters, the Essayist illustrates it by asserting, 



FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 227 

that if " our Sun were broken into fragments, 
so as to fill the sphere girdled by the Earth's 
orbit, all the fragments would revolve round 
the centre in a year," and as there is no 
symptom in any cluster of its parts moving so 
fast, he concludes that clusters, like nebulse, 
must be extremely rare, that is, vaporous, like 
the tails of comets. In support of this view of 
the subject, he alleges that the boldness of the 
opposite opinion, that they are suns, appears 
to he felt by our wisest astronomer, meaning 
Sir John Herschel, to whom he refers in such 
a manner as if Sir John maintained the same 
opinion with himself. This, however, is far 
from being the case, as his own words will 
prove : " Perhaps" says he, " it may be thought 
to savor of the gigantesque to look upon the 
individuals of such a group as suns like our 
own, and their mutual distances as equal to 
those which separate our sun from the nearest 
fixed star: yet, when we consider that their 
united lustre affects the eye with a less im- 
pression of light than a star of the fourth 
magnitude, the idea we are thus compelled 
to form of their distance from us may pre- 



228 MORE WORLDS THAN OKE. 

pare us for almost any estimate of their dimen- 
sions."* 

The same just views of the sidereal system, 
in which no motion is visible,, are taken by Dr. 
Whewell, in his Bridgewater Treatise. f " As- 
tronomy," says he, " teaches us that the stars 
which we see have no immediate relation to our 
system. The obvious supposition is, that they 
are of the nature and order of our sun : the 
minuteness of their apparent magnitude agrees, 
on this supposition, with the enormous and almost 
inconceivable distance which, from all the meas- 
urements of astronomers, we are led to attrib- 
ute to them. If,, then , these are suns, they may, 
like our sun, have planets revolving round them, 
and these may, like our planet, be the seats of 
vegetable, animal, and rational life: — we may 
thus have in the universe worlds, no one knows 
how many, no one can guess how varied ; 
but, however many, however varied, they are 
still but so many provinces in the same em- 
pire, subject to common rules, governed by a 
common power." 

* Outlines, &c, § 866, referred to by the Essayist. 
f Book III. chap. ii. p. 270. 



FIXED STAES AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 229 

From the globular clusters of stars our 
author proceeds to the binary systems, of which 
we have treated in a preceding chapter. He 
admits that the law of universal gravitation is 
established for several of these systems, "with 
as complete evidence as that which carries its 
operation to the orbits of Uranus and Neptune," 
but he endeavors to show that each of the 
stars of the best known binary systems, a Cen~ 
tauri and 61 Cygni, "may have its luminous 
matter diffused through a globe as large as the 
Earth's annual orbit" and that, in this case, 
" it would not be more dense than the tail of a 
comet." It is in vain to argue against asser- 
tions like these, which can only be met by an 
equally positive denial of them. In the present 
case, however, we can do more. Sir John 
Herschel has shown that the sum of the two 
masses of the double star 61 Cygni, is to that 
of the Sun as 0353 to 1, or nearly as 1 to 3*1, 
and hence he concludes, that " the Sun is neither 
vastly greater nor vastly less than the stars 
composing 61 CygnV The conclusion, there- 
fore, of the Essayist, that the matter of these 
systems, " of these brilliant constituents," as 
20 



280 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

Sir Jolm Herschei calls them, would fill the 
Earth's orbit, and have the rarity of comets' 
tails, is contrary to astronomical truth. 

We have already seen that Sir John Herschel 
considers these double stars as suns, " accom- 
panied with their trains of planets and satel- 
lites," and has stated the conditions necessary 
for the existence of their inhabitants. To our 
Essayist such a scheme appears so complex, 
that it would be " impossible to arrange it in a 
stable manner," so as to protect the inhabitants 
from such dangers, and he considers himself as 
having overturned Sir John Herschel's view, by 
simply asserting, without a ground even for the 
assertion, that " their sun maybe a vast sphere 
of luminous matter, and the planets, plunged 
into this atmosphere, may, instead of describ- 
ing regular orbits, plough their way in spiral 
paths through the nebulous abyss to its central 
nucleus" ! 

Having obtained, as our author sarcastically 
remarks, " but little promise of inhabitants from 
clustered stars and double stars," he turns his 
attention to the single stars as the most hopeful 
cases, and asks, " what is the probability that 



FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 231 

the fixed stars or some of them really have plan- 
ets revolving round them ?" To this he justly 
replies, that " the only proof that the fixed stars 
are the centres of planetary systems, resides in 
the assumption that these stars are like the sun ; 
— resemble him in their qualities and nature, 
and therefore must have the same offices and the 
same appendage." 

In admitting that the stars, like the sun, shine 
with an independent light, our author attempts 
to reduce the force of this point of resemblance 
by asserting, that "they resemble not only the 
sun, but nebulous patches in the sky, and the 
tails of comets," and that "there is no obvious 
distinction between the original light of the stars 
and the reflected light of the planets." Now 
these statements are either irrelevant or erro- 
neous. The nebulous patches are clusters of 
stars. It is not true that comets' tails are self- 
luminous, and it is utterly untrue that star light 
and planet light are the same. Our author ought 
to have known that the reflected light of the 
planets contains precisely the same definite dark 
lines in their spectra as the light of the sun, 
which it ought to do, as it is the same light ; 



232 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

while it lias been proved by the direct observa- 
tions of Fraunhofer and others, that the light of 
Sirius, Procyon, and other stars, is essentially 
different, having definite dark lines which do 
not exist in the light of the sun. 

His next assertion is that though the mass of 
certain stars is one-third of that of the sun, yet 
their matter may he diffused through a sphere 
equal to the earth's annual orbit, and that this 
may be the matrix, so to speak both of the sun 
and planets of a system not yet formed — thus 
taking for granted the truth of the nebular 
theoiy, adopted by the author of the Vestiges of 
Creation, and maintained only by persons who 
/"have very erroneous ideas of creation. The 
[ worlds were not made by the operation of law, 
V but by the immediate agency of the Almighty. 
Sir Isaac Newton considered the nebular theory 
as tending to Atheism, and in his five interesting 
letters to Dr. Bentley, he has* ably controverted 
it. " The growth of new systems," he says, " out 
of old ones, (the doctrine maintained by the Es- 
sayist,) without the mediation of a Divine power, 
seems to me apparently absurd." " The diurnal 
rotation of the planets could not be derived from 



FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 233 

gravity, but required a Divine arm to impress 
them." " The same power/' says Newton, 
" whether natural or supernatural, which placed 
the sun in the centre of the six primary planets, 
placed Saturn in the centre of the orb of his five 
secondary planets ; and Jupiter in the centre of 
his four secondary planets ; and the Earth in the 
centre of the moon's orbit ; and therefore had 
this cause been a blind one, ivithout contrivance 
or design, the sun would have been a body of the 
same kind with Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth ; 
that is without light or heat. Why there is one 
body in our system qualified to give light and 
heat to all the rest, I know no reason, but be- 
cause the Author of the system thought it con- 
venient ; and why there is but one body of 
this kind, I knovf no reason, but because one 
was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the 
rest."* 

That the stars undergo changes in their me- 
chanical condition, the Essayist considers to be 
proved by observation. One of these proofs is 
the different colors of different stars, a fact 
certainly, but not a proof of change. Had their 

* Newtoni Opera, torn, iv. pp. 430, 43$. 



234 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

colors changed* we might have inferred a 
oliange of condition ; but knowing that no such 
change takes place, our author most presump- 
tuously regards M their different colors as aris- 
ing from their being at different stages of their 
progress," an opinion without a shadow of prob- 
ability either from observation or analogy. His 
next proof of change is derived from the. "mighty 
changes of which we have evidence in the view 
which geology gives us of the history of this 
Earth ;" but this is no proof at all. The changes 
there referred to are mere changes in the crust 
of the Earth, and not in its mechanical condition, 
and changes too, which would not show 'them- 
selves even to the moon by any change of color 
or of aspect, "If, therefore," the Essayist con- 
tinues, " stellar globes can become planetary 
systems in the progress of ages, it will not be at 
all inconsistent with what we know of the order 
of nature, that only a few, or even that only 
one, (our Earth he means,) should have yet 
reached that condition. All the others but the 

* Ptolemy is said to have noted Sirius as a red star, though it is now 
white. Sirius twinkles with red and blue light, and Ptolemy's eyes, like 
those of several other persons, may have been more sensitive to the red 
than the blue rays. 



FIXED STAES AND BINAEY SYSTEMS. 235 

one (our Earth) may be systems yet. unformed, 
(or fragments or sparks, as lie subsequently calls 
them,) struck off in the forming of. the one ! " 
To such a succession of assertions and hypothe- 
ses it is scarcely necessary to reply. Stellar 
globes have never become planetary systems ; 
and nature has no such order. We are thus 
thrown back to the astronomy of Julius Csesar : 

" The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks." 

Shakspeare. 

The next argument adduced by our author, 
that the stars are unlike our sun, is the exist- 
ence of changes in the stars supposed to be 
indicated by the disappearance of some stars, 
the appearance of others, and the variations in 
the light of a considerable number. The dis- 
appearance of a star proves only that it has 
turned a dark side to our system, and the ap- 
pearance of a new star, that its luminous side 
has come round to us in the course of its rota- 
tion ; while the variations in the light of others 
may arise from spots upon their surface, from 
eclipses by their planets, or from obscuration 
from comets 7 tails, when the variations are of 
an irregular character. From all these causes 



236 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

our own sun may be a variable star to other 
planets. To us even its light is diminished 
when large spots come across its disc ; and 
when we consider the great number of comets 
which belong to our system, and the immense 
magnitude of their tails, the sun's light must 
be occasionally obscured by the interposition 
of these imperfectly transparent bodies. 

That the Fixed Stars are like our Sun in 
every point in which it is possible to compare 
them, will not now be doubted we think by 
our readers. That they are suns themselves, 
as Copernicus, Galileo,. Kepler, and Huygens, 
and every astronomer believes, and as all anal- 
ogy proves, is a doctrine which, we trust, will 
equally command their faith. 

In concluding his chapter on the Fixed Stars, 
our Essayist utters sentiments, and throws out 
conjectures so insulting to Astronomy, and cast- 
ing such ridicule even on the subject of his own 
work, that we can ascribe them only to some 
morbid condition of the mental powers, which 
feeds upon paradox, and delights in doing vio- 
lence to sentiments deeply cherished, and to 
opinions universally believed. We almost doubt 



FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 287 

the accuracy of our vision, when we read tlie 
conjecture that the glorious stars which compose 
the sidereal universe, — that u Arcturus, Orion, 
and the Pleiades," which Scripture tells us 
" God made," were never created by Him at 
all, and " are really long since extinct!" He 
had previously stated, "that in consequence of 
the time employed in the transmission of visual 
impressions, our seeing a star is evidence not 
that it exists now, but that it existed it may be 
many thousands of years ago ;" and thinking 
that such a statement might seem to some read- 
ers to throw doubts upon reasonings which he 
had employed, he makes the following obser- 
vation : — " It may be said that a star which was 
a mere chaos when the light by which we see it 
set out from it, may, in the thousands of years 
which have since elapsed, have grown into an 
orderly world. To which bare possibility we 
may oppose another supposition, at least equally 
possible, that the distant stars zuere sparks or frag- 
ments struck off in the formation of the Solar sys- 
tem, which cere REALLY long since extinct, and 
survive in appearance only by the light which 
they at first emitted 11 ! 



238 MOKE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

With such a speculation before us, we need 
not put the question with which we intended 
to conclude this chapter. If the stars are not 
suns, for what conceivable purpose were they 
created ? Our author has answered the ques- 
tion by asserting, that they were never created 
at all ! To such philosophy and theology we 
prefer that of the poet — ■ 

" Each of these stars is a religious house ; 
I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise, 
And heard hosannahs ring through every sphere. 
The great Proprietor's all-bounteous hand 
Leaves nothing waste, but sows these fiery fields 
With seeds of reason, which to virtues rise 
Beneath his genial ray." 

Young. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 

OBJECTIONS FEOM THE NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 

Having- sullied the glories of the sidereal 
world by converting the stars and systems which 
compose it, into vapor, gas, and comets' tails, 
the Essayist proceeds to apply the same process 
to the planets of the Solar system, converting 
those exterior to the Earth into water and mud, 
and the interior ones into cinder or sheets of 
rigid slag like the moon ! 

This process commences with Neptune, which 
he describes, as a dark and cold world, where 
the light and heat of the sun is incapable of 
" unfolding the vital powers, and cherishing the 
vital enjoyments of animals;" — an assumption 
without any evidence to support it. It is true, 
that if we consider the solar influences as ema- 
nations following a geometrical law, their power 



240 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

upon the surface of Neptune must be immensely 
enfeebled ; but such, a law does not exist. Al- 
though the Sun is nearest the Earth in win- 
ter, his light and heat are, from different 
causes, greatly reduced, and we know, as we 
have shown in a former chapter, that there 
may be conditions of the atmosphere of the 
remoter planets which may procure for them 
more genial influence from the Sun, or there 
may be temperatures in their interior which 
may supply the place of radiated heat. 

The same observations which apply to Nep- 
tune are applicable to Uranus, Saturn, and 
Jupiter, — the same objections on the part of 
the Essayist, and the same reply to them. 
Jupiter, however, is the planet to which he 
especially calls our attention ; and after much 
irrelevant speculation respecting the internal 
condition of our globe, as produced by the su- 
perincumbent weight of its outer formations, 
and " allowing for the compression of the inte- 
rior parts of Jupiter," he pronounces it " toler- 
ably certain that his density is not greater than 
it would be if his entire globe were composed of 
water," and he concludes that Jupiter must be 



NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 241 

a mere sphere of water. He afterwards states 
that there is • much evidence against the exist- 
ence of solid land" in that planet; but in 
opposition to this evidence, he subsequently 
contributes a few cinders at the centre, — arti- 
cles, doubtless, of peculiar value and interest, 
where everything else is water. The existence 
of cinders, however, where there is no heat, and 
where, as we shall presently see, the water is 
ice, must have perplexed his chemistry, and 
hence he wisely withdraws them, by telling us 
that the waters in Jupiter are bottomless, that 
is, without a 'nucleus of cinders. 

In order to prove that Jupiter and the exte- 
rior planets cannot be inhabited, he adduces 
the extreme cold which must exist upon their 
surface ; but when his assertion that Jupiter is 
a sphere of water, and, if peopled at all, 
peopled with cartilaginous and glutinous mon- 
sters, boneless, watery, pulpy creatures, floating 
in the fluid, is met with the objection that the 
waters must be frozen into ice, he has no diffi- 
culty in making Jupiter as hot to answer this 
one purpose, as he formerly made it cold to 
answer another. In this wonderful process of 



242 M0EE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

adaptation, our author's genius and his in- 
ductive method are singularly displayed. No 
difficulty is to him insurmountable. In his 
omniscience of speculation he finds a theory for 
anything or everything ; " Even in the outer re- 
gions of our atmosphere," he says, "the cold is 
probably very many degrees below freezing, 
and in the blank and airless void beyond, it may 
be colder still. It has been calculated by phys- 
ical philosophers, on grounds which seem to 
be solid, that the cold in the space beyond 
our atmosphere is 100° below Zero. The space 
near to Jupiter, IF AN" ABSOLUTE VACUUM, in 
which there is no matter to receive and retain, 
MAY, PEEHAPS, BE NO COLDEE THAN IT IS NEAEEE 

the Sun I" Were we to indulge in arbitrary 
conjectures like these, we could refute, without 
argument, all our author's objections to a plu- 
rality of worlds ; but without availing ourselves 
of so destructive a weapon, may we not, upon 
good grounds, prefer the probable ice to the 
possible water, and accommodate the inhab- 
itants of Jupiter with very comfortable quarters, 
in huts of snow and houses of crystal, warmed 
by subterranean heat, and lighted with the 



STATUKE OF THE PLANETS. 243 

hydrogen of its waters, and its cinders not 
wholly deprived of their bitumen ? 

But we are driven to the necessity of believ- 
ing that Jupiter and the exterior planets are 
either water or ice. That they are neither 
composed of the one material nor the other, is 
proved by direct experiment. If their surfaces 
were either wholly or partly aqueous, the rays 
reflected from them when the planets are in 
quadrature, would contain, what it does not, 
a large portion of polarized light ; and if their 
crust consisted of mountains, and precipices, 
and rocks of ice, some of whose faces must 
occasionally reflect the incident light at nearly 
the polarizing angle, the polarization of their 
light would be distinctly indicated. 

Had our author not exhibited the great 
amount of his knowledge, — an amount so mas- 
sive as occasionally to smother his reason, we 
should have charged him with ignorance of the 
various forms and conditions of density, in 
which the same elements may be combined ; 
but we believe that he knows these as well as 
we do, and, in our position, would use them 
more skilfully. It is difficult to understand 



244 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

why Jupiter should be made of water. His den- 
sity is 1*359, (that of the Earth being 5*66, and 
that of water being 1*000,) greater even than 
that of certain specimens of coal, far greater 
than amianthus ', and pumice stone, which are 
lighter than water. Silex or flint, too, occurs 
with such various densities that there are con- 
ditions of it less dense than Jupiter. In the 
state of tdbasheer it is very much lighter than 
water. In the state of siliceous sinter its den- 
sity is only 1*8. In the state of opal its density 
is 1*9, and in certain varieties of quartz it is so 
high as 2*88. There are pitchstones, too, vary- 
ing from 1*9 of specific gravity to 2*70 ; so that 
the hardest mineral may exist in Jupiter, and 
yet his density not exceed 1*359. But why 
should the minerals in Jupiter be of the same 
nature as those on the Earth ? May not the 
elementary atoms of matter be there combined 
according to different laws, and form spars, and 
gems, and metals, entirely different from ours ? 
Admitting, however, for a moment, the suppo- 
sition, otherwise inadmissible, that there is a 
terrestrial type of inorganic bodies which is to 
be the exemplar for all the planets, we have 



NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 245 

only to suppose these planets to be hollow, or 
to contain large cavities, in order to reconcile 
their average densities with the densities of 
terrestrial bodies. 

The arguments against Saturn being inhab- 
ited, our author considers to be much stronger 
than in the case of Jupiter. He tells us that 
" the outward part of the globe of Saturn is prov- 
ed to be vapor by his streaks and belts," and 
that " we must either suppose that he has no 
inhabitants, or that they are aqueous gelatinous 
creatures too sluggish almost to he deemed 
alive, floating in their ice cold water, and 
shrouded for ever by their humid skies!" 
He " cannot tell us," he says, "whether they 
have eyes or no, but probably if they had, they 
would never see the sun ; and therefore," he 
continues, " we need not commiserate their lot 
in not seeing the host of Saturnian satellites, 
and the ring which to an intelligent Saturnian 
spectator would be so splendid a celestial ob- 
ject. The ring is a glorious object for man's 
view and his contemplation, and therefore is 
not altogether without its use. Still less need 
21* 



246 MOKE WOELDS THAN ONE. 

we (as some* appear to do) regard as a serious 
misfortune to the inhabitants of certain regions 
of the planet, a solar eclipse of fifteen years' 
duration, to which they are liable by the inter- 
position of the ring between them and the sun." 
This specimen of our author's dialectics, in 
which a large dose of banter and ridicule is 
seasoned, with a little condiment of science, 
forms a painful contrast with the following 
noble passage, in which Sir John Herschel dis- 
cusses the very same subject. " The rings of 
Saturn must present a magnificent spectacle 
from those regions of the planets which lie above 
their enlightened sides, as vast arches spanning 
the sky from horizon to horizon, and holding an 
almost invariable situation among the stars. 
On the other hand, in the regions beneath the 
dark side, a solar eclipse of fifteen years in dur- 
ation, under their shadow, must afford (to our 
ideas) an inhospitable asylum to animated 
beings, ill compensated by the faint light of 
the satellites. But we shall do wrong to judge 



* The author here refers to Sir John Herschel, whose authority he 
quotes for the Solar eclipse of fifteen years.— Outlines, &c.,§522. 



NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 247 

of the fitness or unfitness of their condition 
from what we see around us, when perhaps the 
very combinations which only convey images 
of horror to our minds, may be, in reality, thea- 
tres of the most striking and glorious displays of 
beneficent contrivance? 

The remarkable phenomenon, however, of a 
fifteen years' eclipse of the sun to the regions of 
Saturn, placed under the shadow of the dark 
side of the ring, does not exist. Dr. Lardner, 
in an elaborate memoir, On the Appearance of 
Saturn's Eings to the Inhabitants of the Planet,* 
has solved the problem of the appearance of the 
system of rings in the Saturnian firmament, 
and their effect in eclipsing occasionally and 
temporarily the sun, the eight moons, and other 
celestial objects. 

"It is there demonstrated," he says, "that 
the infinite skill of the great Architect of the 
universe has not permitted that this stupendous 
annular appendage, the uses of which still remain 
undiscovered, should be the cause of such dark- 
ness and desolation to the inhabitants of the 
planet, and such an aggravation of the rigors 

* Transactions of the Astronomical Society, 1853, vol. xxii. 



248 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

of their fifteen years' winter, as it lias been in- 
ferred to be. ... . It is shown, on the 
contrary, that by the apparent motion of the 
heavens, produced by the diurnal rotation of Sat- 
turn, the celestial objects, including, of course, the 
sun and the eight moons, are not carried paral- 
lel to the edges of the rings, as has been hitherto 
supposed ; that they are moved so as to pass 
alternately from side to side of each of these 
edges ; that, in general, such objects as pass 
under the rings are only occulted by them for 
short intervals, before and after their meridional 
culmination ; that though under some rare and 
exceptional circumstances and conditions, cer- 
tain objects, the sun b?ing among the number, 
are occulted from rising to setting, the contin- 
uance of such phenomena is not such as has 
been supposed, and the places of its occurrence 
are far more limited. In short, it has no such 
character as would deprive the planet of a.ny 
essential condition of habitahility? 

By arguments u of the same kind, as in the 
case of Jupiter and Saturn, but greatly increased 
in strength, 5 ' as he alleges, our Essayist banishes 
inhabitants from Neptune and Uranus^ and he 



NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 249 

sneeringiy " commends the supposition of the 
probable watery nature and low vitality of their 
inhabitants to the consideration of those who 
contend for inhabitants in those remote regions 
of the Solar system." 

In returning toyyards the sun, our author 
pays his passing respects to Mars, which he 
thinks is more likely to have inhabitants than 
any other planet. This probability, however, 
disappears, and he concedes to this planet the 
possibility of having " creatures of the nature of 
corals and molluscs, saurians and iguanodons." 

The twenty-nine asteroids between Mars and 
Jupiter afford our author a new and inviting 
field for speculation. He considers them as 
mere dots, whose form is not even known to be 
spherical. Setting aside the theory that they 
are the fragments of an exploded planet, he 
thinks "they may be the results of some imper- 
fectly effected concentration of the elements of 
our system (of star dust), which if it had gone 
on more completely and regularly, might have 
produced another planet between Mars and Ju- 
piter. Perhaps they are only the larger masses 
among a great number of smaller ones, result- 



250 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

ing from such, a process ; and it is very con- 
ceivable that the meteoric stones, which have 
from time to time fallen upon the Earth's sur- 
face, are other results of the like process ; — bits 
of planets which have failed in the making, and 
lost their way till arrested by the resistance of 
the Earth's atmosphere I" 

The two interior planets ; Venus and Mer- 
cury, are depopulated into a single page. The 
light and heat of Venus is admitted to be only 
" double those which come to the Earth." He 
finds it " hard to say what kind of animals he 
could place in her, except perhaps the micro- 
scopic creatures with siliceous coverings, which, 
as modern explorers assert, are almost inde- 
structible by heat."' — " Of Mercury," he says, 
"we know still less, and he has not, so far as 
we can tell, any of the conditions which make 
animal existence conceivable." Opinions of a 
very different nature from these we have 
already had occasion to state in a preceding 
chapter, and we must leave it to the judgment 
of the reader to decide upon their relative 
probabilities. 

In order to combine under on general prin- 



NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 251 

ciple the views which, he has taken of the 
condition of the individual planets, the Essayist 
adopts the nebular hypothesis, in which the Sun 
and all the planets are formed out of star dust 
or fire-mist, by its gradual contraction and the 
subsequent solidification of its parts, without 
any interference on the part of the Almighty. 
Upon this hypothesis he erects a scheme or a 
theory of the Solar system, which he consid- 
ers as having a sort of religioas dignity, though 
he fears that, at first, it may appear, to many, 
rash, fanciful, and almost irreverent. In this 
scheme, the fire and water of the nebular 
mass have been separated during their " planet- 
making powers, 1 '' " the water and the va- 
por which belong to the system being driven 
off into the outer regions of its vast cir- 
cuit, while the solid masses, .... such as 
result from the fusion of the most solid 
materials, lie nearer the Sun, and are found 
principally within the orbit of Jupiter." In 
support of these theories he adduces the 
zodiacal light, itself a creature of theory, as an 
appendage to the Sun, and as the remains of 
the Sun's atmosphere extending beyond the 



252 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

orbits of Mercury and Venus — "planets whicfi 
Lave not yet fully emerged from the atmospLere 
in wLicL they Lad their origin— the mother 
light and mother fire in which tLey began to crys- 
tallize, as crystals do in their mother water !" 
These planets are, therefore, within a nebular 
region, which may easily be conceived to he un- 
inhabitable. And wLere this nebular region, 
marked by the zodiacal light, terminates, the 
world of life begins, namely, at the Earth ! 
" The orbit of the Earth is the temperate zone 
of the Solar system, and in that zone is the 
play of Hot and Cold, of Moist and Dry pos- 
sible. 7 ' 

With these wild and extravagant notions 
our author connects the shooting stars or 
meteors which appear in such numbers in our 
atmosphere. He considers them as u revolving 
specks of nebula3," the "outriders of the zo- 
diacal light/' which, when "broken into patches, 
are seen as stars for the moment we are near to 
them."—" And if this be true," he continues, 
" we have to correct, in a certain way, what we 
have previously said of the zodiacal light : that 
no one had thought of resolving it into stars ; 



•NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 258 

for it would thus appear, that in its outer region 
it resolves itself into stars, visible, though but for a 
moment^ to the naked eye /" 

In concluding this novel and startling theory 
of the Solar system, the Essayist tells us that 
' 'the Earth is placed in that region of the 
system in which the planet-forming powers are 
the most vigorous and . potent ; — that the 
Earth is really the largest planetary body in 
the Solar system, — its domestic hearth, and the 
only world in the universe"* We are unwilling 
to charge the author of such theories with 

* A very different opinion is stated by Dr. Whewell, in his Bridgewater 
Treatise. " The view of the universe," says he, " expands also on another 
side. The Earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only 
globe in the universe. There are circling about our own Sun six others, 
so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature : besides our 
Moon and other bodies analogous to it. JVo one can resist the temptation 
to conjecture that these globes, some of them much larger than our own, 
are not dead and barren ; — that they are, like ours, occupied with organi- 
zation, life, intelligence. To conjecture is all that we can do ; yet even 
by the perception of such a possibility, our view of the kingdom of nature 
is enlarged and elevated" — Chap. ii. pp. 269,270. The rest of this chap= 
ter, " On the'Vasiness of the Universe," — in which he speaks of the bi- 
nary systems of the stars as " giving rise possibly to new conditions of 
worlds,"— of "the millions of stars" in the universe, as containing " the 
whole range of created objects in our own system,"— and of " the ten- 
dency of all the arrangements which we can comprehend to support the 
existence, develop the faculties, and to promote the happiness of count- 
less species of creature," — is well worthy of the perusal of the read- 
er, and forms a striking contrast with the opinions of the Essayist. 

22 



254 MOBE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

cherishing opinions hostile to religion. We 
believe that he is ignorant of their tendency, 
and that he has forgotten the truths of inspira- 
tion, and even those of natural religion, amid 
the excitement of discussions, from which he 
is to obtain the high reputation of " having 
accounted for, and reduced into consistency 
and connection, a very extraordinary number 
of points hitherto unexplained." But, however 
sincere may be his piety, which we do not 
question, we tell him, with confidence, that 
his theories are replete with danger, and that 
young minds will draw from them opinions 
the very reverse of his own. When we are 
told that a planet has been bungled in its 
formation, that meteoric stones are bits of 
planets which have failed in the making,* and 
lost their way, can we believe that the all- wise 
Creator was present at the process, " making 
the earth by His power, and establishing the 
world by His wisdom ?" Can we believe that 
He who formed the worlds has made only one, 

* " We know of no blemishes or blunders in creation," says Pro- 
fessor Sedgwick, " and were they there, what would it matter to our 
conception of them, whether they sprang from dead material laws or- 
dained by an all-powerful and all-seeing God, or from an immediate de- 
fect in creative power ?" 



MATURE OF THE PLANETS. 255 

and that, in place of resting on the seventh, 
day, He rested during the whole week of crea- 
tion, and still rests, having transferred His 
almighty power to certain laws of matter and 
motion, by which the Sun and all his planets 
were manufactured from nebulous matter? 
Sir Isaac Newton considered the nebular theory, 
though in his time not known by that name, 
as not only absurd, but verging on atheism. 
In reference to* the creation of a central and 
immovable sun, he observes, that to suppose a 
" central particle so accurately placed in the 
middle (of nebulous matter in a finite space) 
as to be always equally attracted on all sides, 
and thereby continue without motion, seems to 
me fully as hard as to make the sharpest 
needle stand upright on its point upon a 
looking-glass. And much harder it is to sup- 
pose that all the particles in an infinite space 
should be so accurately poised, one upon an- 
other, as to stand still in a perfect equilibrium. 
For I reckon this as hard as to make not one 
needle only, but an infinite number of them, 
stand accurately poised upon their points."* 

* Letter to Bentley, Lett. iv. 



256 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE? 

And in another place lie urges another objec- 
tion to the hypothesis : "But how the matter 
(the nebular matter) should divide itself into 
two sorts, and that part of it which is fit to 
compose a shining body should fail down into 
one mass, and make a sun, and the rest, which 
is fit to compose an opaque body, should 
coalesce, not into one great body, like the 
shining matter, but into many little ones, I do 
not think explicable by mere natural causes, 
but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and 
contrivance of a voluntary agent."* And with 
respect to the diurnal rotation of the planets, 
he distinctly declares that "they could not be 
derived from gravity, but required a divine arm 
to impress them."f 

A more modern, and still living author, who, 
we trust, will long continue an honor to science 
and to his country, has characterized specula- 
tions like these, as "dashing from hypothesis 
to hypothesis, and building a scheme of nature 
against nature, and against the sober interpre- 
tation of those who have best studied their 
works." We will not say of the language of the 

* Letter to Bentley, Lett. i. f Id. Lett. iv. 



NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 257 

Essayist, when he speaks of Nature, or the God 
of Nature, having failed in producing a planet 
where He intended it to be, and of having re- 
corded that failure by broken planets and show- 
ers of meteoric stones ;* — we will not say what 
Professor Sedgwick has said of speculations 
about the nebular theory not more absurd, that 
they are "the raving madness of hypothetical 
extravagance ;" but we sincerely, and without 
desiring to give offence, adopt the rest of his 
declaration, " that it is at open war with all the 
calm lessons of inductive truth, and, in any in- 
terpretation we can give it, bears upon its front 
the stamp of folly and irreverence towards the 
God of Nature." 

" Though this Earth," says Dr. Chalmers, 
" and these heavens were to disappear, there 
are other worlds which roll afar ; — the light of 
other suns shines upon them, and the sky 
which mantles them is garnished with other 
stars. Is it "presumption to say that the moral 

* " The planets and the stars," says the Essayist, " are the lumps which 
have flown from the Potter's wheel of the Great-worker, the shred coils 
of which, in His working, sprung from His mighty lathe ; — the sparks 
which darted from His awful anvil, when the Solar system lay incan- 
descent thereon ; — the curls of vapor which rose from the great caul- 
dron of creation, when its elements were separated."— P, 243. 

22* 



258 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

world extends to these distant and unknown 
regions ; that they are occupied with people ; 
that the charities of home and of neighbor- 
hood flourish there ; that the praises of Gk)d are 
there lifted up, and His goodness rejoiced in; 
that piety has there its temples and its offer- 
ings ; and that the richness of the Divine attri- 
butes is there felt and admired by intelligent 
worshippers?"* 

* Astronomical Discourses, pp. 36, 37. — Without multiplying extracts 
from the writings of philosophers and divines, it may be sufficient to 
state, that Dr. Derham, in his Astrotheology, 3d edit., 1717, pp. xlvii., 
liii., liv., has stated his reasons for believing that the fixed stars and 
planets " are worlds, or places of habitation, which is concluded from 
their being habitable, and well provided for habitation." 11 Dr. Paley also, 
though he does not discuss the subject, evinces his opinion when he 
states, that " even ignorance of the sensitive natures by which other plan- 
ets are inhabited, necessarily keeps from us the knowledge of numberless 
utilities, relations, and subserviences, which we perceive upon our own 
globe.— Natural Theology, edited by Lord Brougham and Sir Charles 
Bell, London, 1836, p. 16. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE. 

Had the doctrine of a Plurality of "Worlds 
been one of those subjects which merely gratify 
onr curiosity, we should not have occupied the 
reader's time, or spent our own, in illustrating 
and defending it. While the scientific truths 
on which it depends form one of the most in- 
teresting branches of natural theology, and yield 
the most striking proofs of wisdom and design, 
they are intimately associated with the future 
destiny of Man. 

There are three departments of Natural The- 
ology which demand our most earnest attention, 
— the living world around us, the world of the 
past, and the world of the future. In the wonder- 
ful mechanisms of animal and vegetable life with 
which we are so familiar, and in the inorganic 
structures amid which w^e dwell, we recognize 
imperfectly the innumerable proofs of matchless 



260 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

skill and benevolent adaptations with, which they 
abound. Our daily familiarity with the ordinary 
functions of life, degrades them in our estima- 
tion. There is something which we deem un- 
clean even in the healthy, condition of animal 
bodies, and their functions and their products, 
which deters all but professional men from their 
study, and robs them of their inherent claims 
as incentives to piety, and as proofs of design. 
Even the chemistry of inspiration by which we 
live, and the science of the Eye and the Ear, 
on which all our intercourse with nature and 
with society depends, are scarcely known to the 
best educated of the people. 
" It is otherwise, however, with that department 
of natural science which treats of the formations 
and fossil remains of an ancient world. With 
the structure and functions of animals which 
inhabited the earth previous to its occupation 
by man, we have no familiarity. We see them 
only in their graves of stone, and beneath their 
monuments of marble — creations which cannot 
again die, and with which everything mortal 
has ceased to be associated. Time, in its most 
hoary aspect, has invested them with a hallowed 



THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE. 281 

and a mystic character. The green waves have 
washed them in their coral beds, and after ages 
of ablution in a tempestuous sea, the ordeal of 
a central fire has completed their purification. 
The bones, and the integuments, and the mean- 
est products of animal life, have thus become 
sainted relics which the most sensitive may 
handle, and the most delicate may prize. 

But there is another department of natural 
science which in its interests, is deeper and more 
varied still. Carrying us back to the birth of 
matter, before life was breathed among its atoms, 
and before, light rushed through the darkness 
of space, Astronomy unites, in a remarkable 
degree, the interests of the past, the present, and 
the future. From the time when the earth was 
without form and void to the present hour, As- 
tronomy has been the study of the shepherd and 
the sage, and in the bosom of sidereal space the 
genius of man has explored the most gigantic 
works of the Almighty, and studied the most 
mysterious of His arrangements. But while the 
astronomer ponders over the wonderful struc- 
tures of the spheres, and investigates the laws 
of their movements, the Christian contemplates 



262 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

them with, a warmer and more affectionate in- 
terest. From their past and present history his 
eager eye turns to the future of the sidereal 
systems, and he looks to them as the hallowed 
spots in which his immortal existence is to 
run. Scripture has not spoken with an articu- 
late voice of the future locality of the blest, but 
Reason has combined the scattered utterances 
of inspiration, and with a voice, almost oracular, 
has declared that He who made the worlds, 
will in the worlds which He has made, place the 
beings of His choice. In the spiritual character 
of their faith, the ambassadors of our Saviour 
have not referred to the materiality of His fu- 
ture kingdom ; but reason compels us to believe, 
that the material body, which is to be raised, 
must be subject to material laws, and reside in 
a material home — a house of many mansions, 
though not made with many hands. 

In what regions of space these mansions are 
built— on what sphere the mouldering dust is 
to be gathered and revived, and by what process 
it is to reach its destination, reason does not 
enable us to determine ; but it is impossible for 
immortal man, with the light of revelation as 



THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE. 263 

his guide, to doubt for a moment that on the 
celestial spheres his future is to be spent — spent,, 
doubtless, in lofty inquiries — in social intercoure 
— in the renewal of domestic ties, — and in the 
service of his almighty Benefactor. With such 
a vista before us, so wide in its expanse, and so 
remote in its termination, what scenes of beauty 
— what forms of the sublime — what enjoyments, 
physical and intellectual, may we not anticipate, 
— wisdom to the sage — rest to the pilgrim — and 
gladness to the broken in heart ! 

/"How welcome those untrodden spheres! 
How sweet this very hour to die ! 
To soar from earth, and find all fears 
Lost in thy light — Eternity. 
" Oh ! in that future let us think 
To hold each heart the heart that shares ; 
With them the .immortal waters drink, 
And soul in soul grow deathless theirs." — Byron. 

If these expectations are just, how are we to 
implant them in the popular mind as incentives 
to piety and principles of action ? The future of 
the Christian is not defined in his creed. En- 
wrapt in apocalyptic mysteries, it evades his 
grasp, and presents no salient points upon which 
either reason or imagination can rest. He looks 



264 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 

beyond the grave as into a nebular region, where 
a few stars are with difficulty descried ; but he 
sees no glorious suns, and no gorgeous planets 
upon which he is to dwell. It is astronomy alone, 
when its simple truths are impressed upon the 
mind, that opens to the Christian's eye the mys- 
terious expanse of the universe ; that fills it with 
objects which arrest his deepest attention ; and 
that creates an intelligible paradise in the world 
to come. We must, therefore, impregnate the 
popular mind with the truths of natural science, 
teaching them in every school, and recommend- 
ing, if not illustrating them, from every pulpit. 
We must instruct our youth, and even age it- 
self, in the geology and physical geography of 
the globe, that they may thus learn the struc- 
ture and use of its brother planets ; and we 
must fix in their memories, and associate with 
their affections, the great truths in the planet- 
ary and sidereal universe on which the doctrine 
of more worlds than one must necessarily rest. 
Thus familiar with the great works of crea- 
tion, — thus seeing them through the heart, as 
well as through the eye, the young will look 
to the future with a keener glance, and with 



THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE. 265 

brighter hopes ; — the weary and the heavy laden 
will rejoice in the vision of their place of rest ; — 
the philosopher will scan with a new sense the 
lofty spheres in which he is to study ; — and the 
Christian will recognize, in the eternal abodes, 
the gorgeous Temples in which he is to offer his 
sacrifice of praise, 



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